97,403 research outputs found
A Comparison of Two Paradigms for Distributed Shared Memory
This paper compares two paradigms for Distributed Shared Memory on loosely coupled computing systems: the shared data-object model as used in Orca, a programming language specially designed for loosely coupled computing systems and the Shared Virtual Memory model. For both paradigms two systems are described, one using only point-to-point messages, the other using broadcasting as well. The two paradigms and their implementations are described briefly. Their performances on four applications are compared: the travelling-salesman problem, alpha-beta search, matrix multiplication and the all-pairs shortest paths problem. The relevant measurements were obtained on a system consisting of 10 MC68020 processors connected by an Ethernet. For comparison purposes, the applications have also been run on a system with physical shared memory. In addition, the paper gives measurements for the first two applications above when Remote Procedure Call is used as the communication mechanism. The measurements show that both paradigms can be used efficiently for programming large-grain parallel applications, with significant speed-ups. The structured shared data-object model achieves the highest speed-ups and is easiest to program and to debug. KEYWORDS: Amoeba Distributed shared memory Distributed programming Orc
A parallel compact-TVD method for compressible fluid dynamics employing shared and distributed-memory paradigms
A novel multi-block compact-TVD finite difference method for the simulation of compressible flows is presented. The method combines distributed and shared-memory paradigms to take advantage of the configuration of modern supercomputers that host many cores per shared-memory node. In our approach a domain decomposition technique is applied to a compact scheme using explicit flux formulas at block interfaces. This method offers great improvement in performance over earlier parallel compact methods that rely on the parallel solution of a linear system. A test case is presented to assess the accuracy and parallel performance of the new method
A Tale of Two Data-Intensive Paradigms: Applications, Abstractions, and Architectures
Scientific problems that depend on processing large amounts of data require
overcoming challenges in multiple areas: managing large-scale data
distribution, co-placement and scheduling of data with compute resources, and
storing and transferring large volumes of data. We analyze the ecosystems of
the two prominent paradigms for data-intensive applications, hereafter referred
to as the high-performance computing and the Apache-Hadoop paradigm. We propose
a basis, common terminology and functional factors upon which to analyze the
two approaches of both paradigms. We discuss the concept of "Big Data Ogres"
and their facets as means of understanding and characterizing the most common
application workloads found across the two paradigms. We then discuss the
salient features of the two paradigms, and compare and contrast the two
approaches. Specifically, we examine common implementation/approaches of these
paradigms, shed light upon the reasons for their current "architecture" and
discuss some typical workloads that utilize them. In spite of the significant
software distinctions, we believe there is architectural similarity. We discuss
the potential integration of different implementations, across the different
levels and components. Our comparison progresses from a fully qualitative
examination of the two paradigms, to a semi-quantitative methodology. We use a
simple and broadly used Ogre (K-means clustering), characterize its performance
on a range of representative platforms, covering several implementations from
both paradigms. Our experiments provide an insight into the relative strengths
of the two paradigms. We propose that the set of Ogres will serve as a
benchmark to evaluate the two paradigms along different dimensions.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure
Overview of Swallow --- A Scalable 480-core System for Investigating the Performance and Energy Efficiency of Many-core Applications and Operating Systems
We present Swallow, a scalable many-core architecture, with a current
configuration of 480 x 32-bit processors.
Swallow is an open-source architecture, designed from the ground up to
deliver scalable increases in usable computational power to allow
experimentation with many-core applications and the operating systems that
support them.
Scalability is enabled by the creation of a tile-able system with a
low-latency interconnect, featuring an attractive communication-to-computation
ratio and the use of a distributed memory configuration.
We analyse the energy and computational and communication performances of
Swallow. The system provides 240GIPS with each core consuming 71--193mW,
dependent on workload. Power consumption per instruction is lower than almost
all systems of comparable scale.
We also show how the use of a distributed operating system (nOS) allows the
easy creation of scalable software to exploit Swallow's potential. Finally, we
show two use case studies: modelling neurons and the overlay of shared memory
on a distributed memory system.Comment: An open source release of the Swallow system design and code will
follow and references to these will be added at a later dat
Improved parallelization techniques for the density matrix renormalization group
A distributed-memory parallelization strategy for the density matrix
renormalization group is proposed for cases where correlation functions are
required. This new strategy has substantial improvements with respect to
previous works. A scalability analysis shows an overall serial fraction of 9.4%
and an efficiency of around 60% considering up to eight nodes. Sources of
possible parallel slowdown are pointed out and solutions to circumvent these
issues are brought forward in order to achieve a better performance.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; version published in Computer Physics
Communication
Parallel Processing of Large Graphs
More and more large data collections are gathered worldwide in various IT
systems. Many of them possess the networked nature and need to be processed and
analysed as graph structures. Due to their size they require very often usage
of parallel paradigm for efficient computation. Three parallel techniques have
been compared in the paper: MapReduce, its map-side join extension and Bulk
Synchronous Parallel (BSP). They are implemented for two different graph
problems: calculation of single source shortest paths (SSSP) and collective
classification of graph nodes by means of relational influence propagation
(RIP). The methods and algorithms are applied to several network datasets
differing in size and structural profile, originating from three domains:
telecommunication, multimedia and microblog. The results revealed that
iterative graph processing with the BSP implementation always and
significantly, even up to 10 times outperforms MapReduce, especially for
algorithms with many iterations and sparse communication. Also MapReduce
extension based on map-side join usually noticeably presents better efficiency,
although not as much as BSP. Nevertheless, MapReduce still remains the good
alternative for enormous networks, whose data structures do not fit in local
memories.Comment: Preprint submitted to Future Generation Computer System
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Computational Strategies for Scalable Genomics Analysis.
The revolution in next-generation DNA sequencing technologies is leading to explosive data growth in genomics, posing a significant challenge to the computing infrastructure and software algorithms for genomics analysis. Various big data technologies have been explored to scale up/out current bioinformatics solutions to mine the big genomics data. In this review, we survey some of these exciting developments in the applications of parallel distributed computing and special hardware to genomics. We comment on the pros and cons of each strategy in the context of ease of development, robustness, scalability, and efficiency. Although this review is written for an audience from the genomics and bioinformatics fields, it may also be informative for the audience of computer science with interests in genomics applications
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