Execution models for mapping programs onto distributed memory parallel computers

The problem of exploiting the parallelism available in a program to efficiently employ the resources of the target machine is addressed. The problem is discussed in the context of building a mapping compiler for a distributed memory parallel machine. The paper describes using execution models to drive the process of mapping a program in the most efficient way onto a particular machine. Through analysis of the execution models for several mapping techniques for one class of programs, we show that the selection of the best technique for a particular program instance can make a significant difference in performance. On the other hand, the results of benchmarks from an implementation of a mapping compiler show that our execution models are accurate enough to select the best mapping technique for a given program

Automatic data/program partitioning using the single assignment principle

Loosely-coupled MIMD architectures do not suffer from memory contention; hence large numbers of processors may be utilized. The main problem, however, is how to partition data and programs in order to exploit the available parallelism. In this paper we show that efficient schemes for automatic data/program partitioning and synchronization may be employed if single assignment is used. Using simulations of program loops common to scientific computations (the Livermore Loops), we demonstrate that only a small fraction of data accesses are remote and thus the degradation in network performance due to multiprocessing is minimal

MPI+X: task-based parallelization and dynamic load balance of finite element assembly

The main computing tasks of a finite element code(FE) for solving partial differential equations (PDE's) are the algebraic system assembly and the iterative solver. This work focuses on the first task, in the context of a hybrid MPI+X paradigm. Although we will describe algorithms in the FE context, a similar strategy can be straightforwardly applied to other discretization methods, like the finite volume method. The matrix assembly consists of a loop over the elements of the MPI partition to compute element matrices and right-hand sides and their assemblies in the local system to each MPI partition. In a MPI+X hybrid parallelism context, X has consisted traditionally of loop parallelism using OpenMP. Several strategies have been proposed in the literature to implement this loop parallelism, like coloring or substructuring techniques to circumvent the race condition that appears when assembling the element system into the local system. The main drawback of the first technique is the decrease of the IPC due to bad spatial locality. The second technique avoids this issue but requires extensive changes in the implementation, which can be cumbersome when several element loops should be treated. We propose an alternative, based on the task parallelism of the element loop using some extensions to the OpenMP programming model. The taskification of the assembly solves both aforementioned problems. In addition, dynamic load balance will be applied using the DLB library, especially efficient in the presence of hybrid meshes, where the relative costs of the different elements is impossible to estimate a priori. This paper presents the proposed methodology, its implementation and its validation through the solution of large computational mechanics problems up to 16k cores