47,592 research outputs found
dOpenCL: Towards a Uniform Programming Approach for Distributed Heterogeneous Multi-/Many-Core Systems
Modern computer systems are becoming increasingly heterogeneous by comprising multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and other accelerators. Current programming approaches for such systems usually require the application developer to use a combination of several programming models (e. g., MPI with OpenCL or CUDA) in order to exploit the full compute
capability of a system.
In this paper, we present dOpenCL (Distributed OpenCL) – a uniform approach to programming distributed heterogeneous systems with accelerators. dOpenCL extends the OpenCL standard, such that arbitrary computing devices installed on any node of a distributed system can be used together within a single application. dOpenCL allows moving data and program
code to these devices in a transparent, portable manner. Since dOpenCL is designed as a fully-fledged implementation of the OpenCL API, it allows running existing OpenCL applications in a heterogeneous distributed environment without any modifications. We describe in detail the mechanisms that are required to implement OpenCL for distributed systems, including a device management mechanism for running multiple applications concurrently. Using three application studies, we compare the performance of dOpenCL with MPI+OpenCL and a standard OpenCL implementation
A semi-formal comparison between the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (COBRA) and the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)
The way in which application systems and software are built has changed dramatically over the past few
years. This is mainly due to advances in hardware technology, programming languages, as well as the
requirement to build better software application systems in less time. The importance of mondial (worldwide)
communication between systems is also growing exponentially. People are using network-based
applications daily, communicating not only locally, but also globally. The Internet, the global network,
therefore plays a significant role in the development of new software. Distributed object computing is one
of the computing paradigms that promise to solve the need to develop clienVserver application systems,
communicating over heterogeneous environments.
This study, of limited scope, concentrates on one crucial element without which distributed object computing
cannot be implemented. This element is the communication software, also called middleware, which allows
objects situated on different hardware platforms to communicate over a network. Two of the most important
middleware standards for distributed object computing today are the Common Object Request Broker
Architecture (CORBA) from the Object Management Group, and the Distributed Component Object
Model (DCOM) from Microsoft Corporation. Each of these standards is implemented in commercially
available products, allowing distributed objects to communicate over heterogeneous networks.
In studying each of the middleware standards, a formal way of comparing CORBA and DCOM is presented,
namely meta-modelling. For each of these two distributed object infrastructures (middleware), meta-models
are constructed. Based on this uniform and unbiased approach, a comparison of the two distributed object
infrastructures is then performed. The results are given as a set of tables in which the differences and
similarities of each distributed object infrastructure are exhibited. By adopting this approach, errors caused
by misunderstanding or misinterpretation are minimised. Consequently, an accurate and unbiased
comparison between CORBA and DCOM is made possible, which constitutes the main aim of this
dissertation.ComputingM. Sc. (Computer Science
Object-oriented Tools for Distributed Computing
Distributed computing systems are proliferating, owing to the availability of powerful, affordable microcomputers and inexpensive communication networks. A critical problem in developing such systems is getting application programs to interact with one another across a computer network. Remote interprogram connectivity is particularly challenging across heterogeneous environments, where applications run on different kinds of computers and operating systems. NetWorks! (trademark) is an innovative software product that provides an object-oriented messaging solution to these problems. This paper describes the design and functionality of NetWorks! and illustrates how it is being used to build complex distributed applications for NASA and in the commercial sector
Taking advantage of hybrid systems for sparse direct solvers via task-based runtimes
The ongoing hardware evolution exhibits an escalation in the number, as well
as in the heterogeneity, of computing resources. The pressure to maintain
reasonable levels of performance and portability forces application developers
to leave the traditional programming paradigms and explore alternative
solutions. PaStiX is a parallel sparse direct solver, based on a dynamic
scheduler for modern hierarchical manycore architectures. In this paper, we
study the benefits and limits of replacing the highly specialized internal
scheduler of the PaStiX solver with two generic runtime systems: PaRSEC and
StarPU. The tasks graph of the factorization step is made available to the two
runtimes, providing them the opportunity to process and optimize its traversal
in order to maximize the algorithm efficiency for the targeted hardware
platform. A comparative study of the performance of the PaStiX solver on top of
its native internal scheduler, PaRSEC, and StarPU frameworks, on different
execution environments, is performed. The analysis highlights that these
generic task-based runtimes achieve comparable results to the
application-optimized embedded scheduler on homogeneous platforms. Furthermore,
they are able to significantly speed up the solver on heterogeneous
environments by taking advantage of the accelerators while hiding the
complexity of their efficient manipulation from the programmer.Comment: Heterogeneity in Computing Workshop (2014
Global Grids and Software Toolkits: A Study of Four Grid Middleware Technologies
Grid is an infrastructure that involves the integrated and collaborative use
of computers, networks, databases and scientific instruments owned and managed
by multiple organizations. Grid applications often involve large amounts of
data and/or computing resources that require secure resource sharing across
organizational boundaries. This makes Grid application management and
deployment a complex undertaking. Grid middlewares provide users with seamless
computing ability and uniform access to resources in the heterogeneous Grid
environment. Several software toolkits and systems have been developed, most of
which are results of academic research projects, all over the world. This
chapter will focus on four of these middlewares--UNICORE, Globus, Legion and
Gridbus. It also presents our implementation of a resource broker for UNICORE
as this functionality was not supported in it. A comparison of these systems on
the basis of the architecture, implementation model and several other features
is included.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure
Programming MPSoC platforms: Road works ahead
This paper summarizes a special session on multicore/multi-processor system-on-chip (MPSoC) programming challenges. The current trend towards MPSoC platforms in most computing domains does not only mean a radical change in computer architecture. Even more important from a SW developer´s viewpoint, at the same time the classical sequential von Neumann programming model needs to be overcome. Efficient utilization of the MPSoC HW resources demands for radically new models and corresponding SW development tools, capable of exploiting the available parallelism and guaranteeing bug-free parallel SW. While several standards are established in the high-performance computing domain (e.g. OpenMP), it is clear that more innovations are required for successful\ud
deployment of heterogeneous embedded MPSoC. On the other hand, at least for coming years, the freedom for disruptive programming technologies is limited by the huge amount of certified sequential code that demands for a more pragmatic, gradual tool and code replacement strategy
HSTREAM: A directive-based language extension for heterogeneous stream computing
Big data streaming applications require utilization of heterogeneous parallel
computing systems, which may comprise multiple multi-core CPUs and many-core
accelerating devices such as NVIDIA GPUs and Intel Xeon Phis. Programming such
systems require advanced knowledge of several hardware architectures and
device-specific programming models, including OpenMP and CUDA. In this paper,
we present HSTREAM, a compiler directive-based language extension to support
programming stream computing applications for heterogeneous parallel computing
systems. HSTREAM source-to-source compiler aims to increase the programming
productivity by enabling programmers to annotate the parallel regions for
heterogeneous execution and generate target specific code. The HSTREAM runtime
automatically distributes the workload across CPUs and accelerating devices. We
demonstrate the usefulness of HSTREAM language extension with various
applications from the STREAM benchmark. Experimental evaluation results show
that HSTREAM can keep the same programming simplicity as OpenMP, and the
generated code can deliver performance beyond what CPUs-only and GPUs-only
executions can deliver.Comment: Preprint, 21st IEEE International Conference on Computational Science
and Engineering (CSE 2018
A Domain Specific Approach to High Performance Heterogeneous Computing
Users of heterogeneous computing systems face two problems: firstly, in
understanding the trade-off relationships between the observable
characteristics of their applications, such as latency and quality of the
result, and secondly, how to exploit knowledge of these characteristics to
allocate work to distributed computing platforms efficiently. A domain specific
approach addresses both of these problems. By considering a subset of
operations or functions, models of the observable characteristics or domain
metrics may be formulated in advance, and populated at run-time for task
instances. These metric models can then be used to express the allocation of
work as a constrained integer program, which can be solved using heuristics,
machine learning or Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) frameworks. These
claims are illustrated using the example domain of derivatives pricing in
computational finance, with the domain metrics of workload latency or makespan
and pricing accuracy. For a large, varied workload of 128 Black-Scholes and
Heston model-based option pricing tasks, running upon a diverse array of 16
Multicore CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs platforms, predictions made by models of both
the makespan and accuracy are generally within 10% of the run-time performance.
When these models are used as inputs to machine learning and MILP-based
workload allocation approaches, a latency improvement of up to 24 and 270 times
over the heuristic approach is seen.Comment: 14 pages, preprint draft, minor revisio
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