Evaluation of synchronization protocols for fine-grain HPC sensor data time-stamping and collection

Solutions for accurate and fine-grain monitoring are at the basis of the growth of future large-scale green high performance computing (HPC) infrastructures. The capability of these systems to adapt to specific application requirements relies on sensing and correlating several distributed physical parameters with application phases and states. Meeting such requirements allows thus to achieve a better use of the resources, higher throughput and higher energy-efficiency. As the capability of drawing such correlations relies on the synchronization across a network of nodes and measuring devices, the use of synchronization protocols becomes a critical component. Novel low-cost embedded devices start to include hardware support for network synchronization protocols to achieve a high resolution time accuracy. These devices are promising for monitoring physical parameters of HPC infrastructures. In this paper we evaluate how the performance of the two widely used network synchronization protocols, namely the Network Time Protocol and IEEE 1588, scale on a state-of-the-art embedded platform, namely a Beaglebone Black Board.