Parallel Finger Search Structures

In this paper we present two versions of a parallel finger structure FS on p processors that supports searches, insertions and deletions, and has a finger at each end. This is to our knowledge the first implementation of a parallel search structure that is work-optimal with respect to the finger bound and yet has very good parallelism (within a factor of O(log p)^2) of optimal). We utilize an extended implicit batching framework that transparently facilitates the use of FS by any parallel program P that is modelled by a dynamically generated DAG D where each node is either a unit-time instruction or a call to FS. The work done by FS is bounded by the finger bound F_L (for some linearization L of D), i.e. each operation on an item with distance r from a finger takes O(log r+1) amortized work. Running P using the simpler version takes O((T_1+F_L)/p + T_infty + d * ((log p)^2 + log n)) time on a greedy scheduler, where T_1, T_infty are the size and span of D respectively, and n is the maximum number of items in FS, and d is the maximum number of calls to FS along any path in D. Using the faster version, this is reduced to O((T_1+F_L)/p + T_infty + d *(log p)^2 + s_L) time, where s_L is the weighted span of D where each call to FS is weighted by its cost according to F_L. FS can be extended to a fixed number of movable fingers. The data structures in our paper fit into the dynamic multithreading paradigm, and their performance bounds are directly composable with other data structures given in the same paradigm. Also, the results can be translated to practical implementations using work-stealing schedulers

GPU LSM: A Dynamic Dictionary Data Structure for the GPU

We develop a dynamic dictionary data structure for the GPU, supporting fast insertions and deletions, based on the Log Structured Merge tree (LSM). Our implementation on an NVIDIA K40c GPU has an average update (insertion or deletion) rate of 225 M elements/s, 13.5x faster than merging items into a sorted array. The GPU LSM supports the retrieval operations of lookup, count, and range query operations with an average rate of 75 M, 32 M and 23 M queries/s respectively. The trade-off for the dynamic updates is that the sorted array is almost twice as fast on retrievals. We believe that our GPU LSM is the first dynamic general-purpose dictionary data structure for the GPU.Comment: 11 pages, accepted to appear on the Proceedings of IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'18

High-Performance Composable Transactional Data Structures

Exploiting the parallelism in multiprocessor systems is a major challenge in the post ``power wall\u27\u27 era. Programming for multicore demands a change in the way we design and use fundamental data structures. Concurrent data structures allow scalable and thread-safe accesses to shared data. They provide operations that appear to take effect atomically when invoked individually. A main obstacle to the practical use of concurrent data structures is their inability to support composable operations, i.e., to execute multiple operations atomically in a transactional manner. The problem stems from the inability of concurrent data structure to ensure atomicity of transactions composed from operations on a single or multiple data structures instances. This greatly hinders software reuse because users can only invoke data structure operations in a limited number of ways. Existing solutions, such as software transactional memory (STM) and transactional boosting, manage transaction synchronization in an external layer separated from the data structure\u27s own thread-level concurrency control. Although this reduces programming effort, it leads to significant overhead associated with additional synchronization and the need to rollback aborted transactions. In this dissertation, I address the practicality and efficiency concerns by designing, implementing, and evaluating high-performance transactional data structures that facilitate the development of future highly concurrent software systems. Firstly, I present two methodologies for implementing high-performance transactional data structures based on existing concurrent data structures using either lock-based or lock-free synchronizations. For lock-based data structures, the idea is to treat data accessed by multiple operations as resources. The challenge is for each thread to acquire exclusive access to desired resources while preventing deadlock or starvation. Existing locking strategies, like two-phase locking and resource hierarchy, suffer from performance degradation under heavy contention, while lacking a desirable fairness guarantee. To overcome these issues, I introduce a scalable lock algorithm for shared-memory multiprocessors addressing the resource allocation problem. It is the first multi-resource lock algorithm that guarantees the strongest first-in, first-out (FIFO) fairness. For lock-free data structures, I present a methodology for transforming them into high-performance lock-free transactional data structures without revamping the data structures\u27 original synchronization design. My approach leverages the semantic knowledge of the data structure to eliminate the overhead of false conflicts and rollbacks. Secondly, I apply the proposed methodologies and present a suite of novel transactional search data structures in the form of an open source library. This is interesting not only because the fundamental importance of search data structures in computer science and their wide use in real world programs, but also because it demonstrate the implementation issues that arise when using the methodologies I have developed. This library is not only a compilation of a large number of fundamental data structures for multiprocessor applications, but also a framework for enabling composable transactions, and moreover, an infrastructure for continuous integration of new data structures. By taking such a top-down approach, I am able to identify and consider the interplay of data structure interface operations as a whole, which allows for scrutinizing their commutativity rules and hence opens up possibilities for design optimizations. Lastly, I evaluate the throughput of the proposed data structures using transactions with randomly generated operations on two difference hardware systems. To ensure the strongest possible competition, I chose the best performing alternatives from state-of-the-art locking protocols and transactional memory systems in the literature. The results show that it is straightforward to build efficient transactional data structures when using my multi-resource lock as a drop-in replacement for transactional boosted data structures. Furthermore, this work shows that it is possible to build efficient lock-free transactional data structures with all perceived benefits of lock-freedom and with performance far better than generic transactional memory systems

Models for energy consumption of data structures and algorithms

EXCESS deliverable D2.1. More information at http://www.excess-project.eu/This deliverable reports our early energy models for data structures and algorithms based on both micro-benchmarks and concurrent algorithms. It reports the early results of Task 2.1 on investigating and modeling the trade-off between energy and performance in concurrent data structures and algorithms, which forms the basis for the whole work package 2 (WP2). The work has been conducted on the two main EXCESS platforms: (1) Intel platform with recent Intel multi-core CPUs and (2) Movidius embedded platform