Improving the Efficiency of a Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Power Management System for HPC Clusters Using Curriculum Learning

High energy consumption remains a key challenge in high-performance computing (HPC) systems, which often feature hundreds or thousands of nodes drawing substantial power even in idle or standby modes. Although powering down unused nodes can improve energy efficiency, choosing the wrong time to do so can degrade quality of service by delaying job execution. Machine learning, in particular reinforcement learning (RL), has shown promise in determining optimal times to switch nodes on or off. In this study, we enhance the performance of a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agent for HPC power management by integrating curriculum learning (CL), a training approach that introduces tasks with gradually increasing difficulty. Using the Batsim-py simulation framework, we compare the proposed CL-based agent to both a baseline DRL method (without CL) and the conventional fixed-time timeout strategy. Experimental results confirm that an easy-to-hard curriculum outperforms other training orders in terms of reducing wasted energy usage. The best agent achieves a 3.73% energy reduction over the baseline DRL method and a 4.66% improvement compared to the best timeout configuration (shutdown every 15 minutes of idle time). In addition, it reduces average job waiting time by 9.24% and maintains a higher job-filling rate, indicating more effective resource utilization. Sensitivity tests across various switch-on durations, power levels, and cluster sizes further reveal the agent's adaptability to changing system parameters without retraining. These findings demonstrate that curriculum learning can significantly improve DRL-based power management in HPC, balancing energy savings, quality of service, and robustness to diverse configurations.

mdx: A Cloud Platform for Supporting Data Science and Cross-Disciplinary Research Collaborations

The growing amount of data and advances in data science have created a need for a new kind of cloud platform that provides users with flexibility, strong security, and the ability to couple with supercomputers and edge devices through high-performance networks. We have built such a nation-wide cloud platform, called "mdx" to meet this need. The mdx platform's virtualization service, jointly operated by 9 national universities and 2 national research institutes in Japan, launched in 2021, and more features are in development. Currently mdx is used by researchers in a wide variety of domains, including materials informatics, geo-spatial information science, life science, astronomical science, economics, social science, and computer science. This paper provides an the overview of the mdx platform, details the motivation for its development, reports its current status, and outlines its future plans.