Parallel Algorithms for Summing Floating-Point Numbers

The problem of exactly summing n floating-point numbers is a fundamental problem that has many applications in large-scale simulations and computational geometry. Unfortunately, due to the round-off error in standard floating-point operations, this problem becomes very challenging. Moreover, all existing solutions rely on sequential algorithms which cannot scale to the huge datasets that need to be processed. In this paper, we provide several efficient parallel algorithms for summing n floating point numbers, so as to produce a faithfully rounded floating-point representation of the sum. We present algorithms in PRAM, external-memory, and MapReduce models, and we also provide an experimental analysis of our MapReduce algorithms, due to their simplicity and practical efficiency.Comment: Conference version appears in SPAA 201

Reproducibility, accuracy and performance of the Feltor code and library on parallel computer architectures

Feltor is a modular and free scientific software package. It allows developing platform independent code that runs on a variety of parallel computer architectures ranging from laptop CPUs to multi-GPU distributed memory systems. Feltor consists of both a numerical library and a collection of application codes built on top of the library. Its main target are two- and three-dimensional drift- and gyro-fluid simulations with discontinuous Galerkin methods as the main numerical discretization technique. We observe that numerical simulations of a recently developed gyro-fluid model produce non-deterministic results in parallel computations. First, we show how we restore accuracy and bitwise reproducibility algorithmically and programmatically. In particular, we adopt an implementation of the exactly rounded dot product based on long accumulators, which avoids accuracy losses especially in parallel applications. However, reproducibility and accuracy alone fail to indicate correct simulation behaviour. In fact, in the physical model slightly different initial conditions lead to vastly different end states. This behaviour translates to its numerical representation. Pointwise convergence, even in principle, becomes impossible for long simulation times. In a second part, we explore important performance tuning considerations. We identify latency and memory bandwidth as the main performance indicators of our routines. Based on these, we propose a parallel performance model that predicts the execution time of algorithms implemented in Feltor and test our model on a selection of parallel hardware architectures. We are able to predict the execution time with a relative error of less than 25% for problem sizes between 0.1 and 1000 MB. Finally, we find that the product of latency and bandwidth gives a minimum array size per compute node to achieve a scaling efficiency above 50% (both strong and weak)

Reproducibility of parallel preconditioned conjugate gradient in hybrid programming environments

[EN] The Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method is often employed for the solution of linear systems of equations arising in numerical simulations of physical phenomena. While being widely used, the solver is also known for its lack of accuracy while computing the residual. In this article, we propose two algorithmic solutions that originate from the ExBLAS project to enhance the accuracy of the solver as well as to ensure its reproducibility in a hybrid MPI + OpenMP tasks programming environment. One is based on ExBLAS and preserves every bit of information until the final rounding, while the other relies upon floating-point expansions and, hence, expands the intermediate precision. Instead of converting the entire solver into its ExBLAS-related implementation, we identify those parts that violate reproducibility/non-associativity, secure them, and combine this with the sequential executions. These algorithmic strategies are reinforced with programmability suggestions to assure deterministic executions. Finally, we verify these approaches on two modern HPC systems: both versions deliver reproducible number of iterations, residuals, direct errors, and vector-solutions for the overhead of less than 37.7% on 768 cores.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was partially supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research, innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement via the Robust project No. 842528 as well as the Project HPC-EUROPA3 (INFRAIA-2016-1-730897), with the support of the H2020 EC RIA Programme; in particular, the author gratefully acknowledges the support of Vicenc comma Beltran and the computer resources and technical support provided by BSC. The researchers from Universitat Jaume I (UJI) and Universitat Polit ' ecnica de Valencia (UPV) were supported by MINECO project TIN2017-82972-R. Maria Barreda was also supported by the POSDOC-A/2017/11 project from the Universitat Jaume I.Iakymchuk, R.; Barreda Vayá, M.; Graillat, S.; Aliaga, JI.; Quintana Ortí, ES. (2020). Reproducibility of parallel preconditioned conjugate gradient in hybrid programming environments. International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. 34(5):502-518. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094342020932650S502518345Aliaga, J. I., Barreda, M., Flegar, G., Bollhöfer, M., & Quintana-Ortí, E. S. (2017). Communication in task-parallel ILU-preconditioned CG solvers using MPI + OmpSs. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 29(21), e4280. doi:10.1002/cpe.4280Bailey, D. H. (2013). High-precision computation: Applications and challenges [Keynote I]. 2013 IEEE 21st Symposium on Computer Arithmetic. doi:10.1109/arith.2013.39Barrett, R., Berry, M., Chan, T. F., Demmel, J., Donato, J., Dongarra, J., … van der Vorst, H. (1994). Templates for the Solution of Linear Systems: Building Blocks for Iterative Methods. doi:10.1137/1.9781611971538Burgess, N., Goodyer, C., Hinds, C. N., & Lutz, D. R. (2019). High-Precision Anchored Accumulators for Reproducible Floating-Point Summation. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 68(7), 967-978. doi:10.1109/tc.2018.2855729Carson, E., & Higham, N. J. (2018). Accelerating the Solution of Linear Systems by Iterative Refinement in Three Precisions. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 40(2), A817-A847. doi:10.1137/17m1140819Collange, S., Defour, D., Graillat, S., & Iakymchuk, R. (2015). Numerical reproducibility for the parallel reduction on multi- and many-core architectures. Parallel Computing, 49, 83-97. doi:10.1016/j.parco.2015.09.001Dekker, T. J. (1971). A floating-point technique for extending the available precision. Numerische Mathematik, 18(3), 224-242. doi:10.1007/bf01397083Demmel, J., & Hong Diep Nguyen. (2013). Fast Reproducible Floating-Point Summation. 2013 IEEE 21st Symposium on Computer Arithmetic. doi:10.1109/arith.2013.9Demmel, J., & Nguyen, H. D. (2015). Parallel Reproducible Summation. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 64(7), 2060-2070. doi:10.1109/tc.2014.2345391Dongarra, J. J., Du Croz, J., Hammarling, S., & Duff, I. S. (1990). A set of level 3 basic linear algebra subprograms. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 16(1), 1-17. doi:10.1145/77626.79170Fousse, L., Hanrot, G., Lefèvre, V., Pélissier, P., & Zimmermann, P. (2007). MPFR. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 33(2), 13. doi:10.1145/1236463.1236468Hida, Y., Li, X. S., & Bailey, D. H. (s. f.). Algorithms for quad-double precision floating point arithmetic. Proceedings 15th IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic. ARITH-15 2001. doi:10.1109/arith.2001.930115Hunold, S., & Carpen-Amarie, A. (2016). Reproducible MPI Benchmarking is Still Not as Easy as You Think. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 27(12), 3617-3630. doi:10.1109/tpds.2016.2539167IEEE Computer Society (2008) IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic. Piscataway: IEEE Standard, pp. 754–2008.Kulisch, U., & Snyder, V. (2010). The exact dot product as basic tool for long interval arithmetic. Computing, 91(3), 307-313. doi:10.1007/s00607-010-0127-7Kulisch, U. (2013). Computer Arithmetic and Validity. doi:10.1515/9783110301793Lawson, C. L., Hanson, R. J., Kincaid, D. R., & Krogh, F. T. (1979). Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms for Fortran Usage. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 5(3), 308-323. doi:10.1145/355841.355847Lutz, D. R., & Hinds, C. N. (2017). High-Precision Anchored Accumulators for Reproducible Floating-Point Summation. 2017 IEEE 24th Symposium on Computer Arithmetic (ARITH). doi:10.1109/arith.2017.20Mukunoki, D., Ogita, T., & Ozaki, K. (2020). Reproducible BLAS Routines with Tunable Accuracy Using Ozaki Scheme for Many-Core Architectures. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 516-527. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-43229-4_44Nguyen, H. D., & Demmel, J. (2015). Reproducible Tall-Skinny QR. 2015 IEEE 22nd Symposium on Computer Arithmetic. doi:10.1109/arith.2015.28Ogita, T., Rump, S. M., & Oishi, S. (2005). Accurate Sum and Dot Product. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 26(6), 1955-1988. doi:10.1137/030601818Ozaki, K., Ogita, T., Oishi, S., & Rump, S. M. (2011). Error-free transformations of matrix multiplication by using fast routines of matrix multiplication and its applications. Numerical Algorithms, 59(1), 95-118. doi:10.1007/s11075-011-9478-1Priest, D. M. (s. f.). Algorithms for arbitrary precision floating point arithmetic. [1991] Proceedings 10th IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic. doi:10.1109/arith.1991.145549Rump, S. M., Ogita, T., & Oishi, S. (2008). Accurate Floating-Point Summation Part I: Faithful Rounding. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 31(1), 189-224. doi:10.1137/050645671Rump, S. M., Ogita, T., & Oishi, S. (2009). Accurate Floating-Point Summation Part II: Sign, K-Fold Faithful and Rounding to Nearest. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 31(2), 1269-1302. doi:10.1137/07068816xRump, S. M., Ogita, T., & Oishi, S. (2010). Fast high precision summation. Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications, IEICE, 1(1), 2-24. doi:10.1587/nolta.1.2Saad, Y. (2003). Iterative Methods for Sparse Linear Systems. doi:10.1137/1.9780898718003Wiesenberger, M., Einkemmer, L., Held, M., Gutierrez-Milla, A., Sáez, X., & Iakymchuk, R. (2019). Reproducibility, accuracy and performance of the Feltor code and library on parallel computer architectures. Computer Physics Communications, 238, 145-156. doi:10.1016/j.cpc.2018.12.00

GRAPE-6: The massively-parallel special-purpose computer for astrophysical particle simulation

In this paper, we describe the architecture and performance of the GRAPE-6 system, a massively-parallel special-purpose computer for astrophysical $N$-body simulations. GRAPE-6 is the successor of GRAPE-4, which was completed in 1995 and achieved the theoretical peak speed of 1.08 Tflops. As was the case with GRAPE-4, the primary application of GRAPE-6 is simulation of collisional systems, though it can be used for collisionless systems. The main differences between GRAPE-4 and GRAPE-6 are (a) The processor chip of GRAPE-6 integrates 6 force-calculation pipelines, compared to one pipeline of GRAPE-4 (which needed 3 clock cycles to calculate one interaction), (b) the clock speed is increased from 32 to 90 MHz, and (c) the total number of processor chips is increased from 1728 to 2048. These improvements resulted in the peak speed of 64 Tflops. We also discuss the design of the successor of GRAPE-6.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASJ, scheduled to appear in Vol. 55, No.

Reproducibility strategies for parallel preconditioned Conjugate Gradient

[EN] The Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method is often used in numerical simulations. While being widely used, the solver is also known for its lack of accuracy while computing the residual. In this article, we aim at a twofold goal: enhance the accuracy of the solver but also ensure its reproducibility in a message-passing implementation. We design and employ various strategies starting from the ExBLAS approach (through preserving every bit of information until final rounding) to its more lightweight performance-oriented variant (through expanding the intermediate precision). These algorithmic strategies are reinforced with programmability suggestions to assure deterministic executions. Finally, we verify these strategies on modern HPC systems: both versions deliver reproducible number of iterations, residuals, direct errors, and vector-solutions for the overhead of only 29% (ExBLAS) and 4% (lightweight) on 768 processes.To begin with, we would like to thank the reviewers for their thorough reading of the article as well as their valuable comments and suggestions. This research was partially supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research, innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement via the Robust project No. 842528 as well as the Project HPC-EUROPA3 (INFRAIA-2016-1-730897), with the support of the H2020 EC RIA Programme; in particular, the author gratefully acknowledges the support of Vicenc Beltran and the computer resources and technical support provided by BSC. The researchers from Universitat Jaume I (UJI) and Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) were supported by MINECO, Spain project TIN2017-82972-R. Maria Barreda was also supported by the POSDOC-A/2017/11 project from the Universitat Jaume I, Spain.Iakymchuk, R.; Barreda, M.; Wiesenberger, M.; Aliaga, JI.; Quintana Ortí, ES. (2020). Reproducibility strategies for parallel preconditioned Conjugate Gradient. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics. 371:1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cam.2019.112697S113371Lawson, C. L., Hanson, R. J., Kincaid, D. R., & Krogh, F. T. (1979). Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms for Fortran Usage. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 5(3), 308-323. doi:10.1145/355841.355847Dongarra, J. J., Du Croz, J., Hammarling, S., & Duff, I. S. (1990). A set of level 3 basic linear algebra subprograms. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 16(1), 1-17. doi:10.1145/77626.79170Demmel, J., & Nguyen, H. D. (2015). Parallel Reproducible Summation. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 64(7), 2060-2070. doi:10.1109/tc.2014.2345391Iakymchuk, R., Graillat, S., Defour, D., & Quintana-Ortí, E. S. (2019). Hierarchical approach for deriving a reproducible unblocked LU factorization. The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 33(5), 791-803. doi:10.1177/1094342019832968Iakymchuk, R., Defour, D., Collange, S., & Graillat, S. (2016). Reproducible and Accurate Matrix Multiplication. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 126-137. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31769-4_11Rump, S. M., Ogita, T., & Oishi, S. (2009). Accurate Floating-Point Summation Part II: Sign, K-Fold Faithful and Rounding to Nearest. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 31(2), 1269-1302. doi:10.1137/07068816xBurgess, N., Goodyer, C., Hinds, C. N., & Lutz, D. R. (2019). High-Precision Anchored Accumulators for Reproducible Floating-Point Summation. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 68(7), 967-978. doi:10.1109/tc.2018.2855729D. Mukunoki, T. Ogita, K. Ozaki, Accurate and reproducible BLAS routines with Ozaki scheme for many-core architectures, in: Proc. International Conference on Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics, PPAM2019, 2019, accepted.Ogita, T., Rump, S. M., & Oishi, S. (2005). Accurate Sum and Dot Product. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 26(6), 1955-1988. doi:10.1137/030601818Kulisch, U., & Snyder, V. (2010). The exact dot product as basic tool for long interval arithmetic. Computing, 91(3), 307-313. doi:10.1007/s00607-010-0127-7Boldo, S., & Melquiond, G. (2008). Emulation of a FMA and Correctly Rounded Sums: Proved Algorithms Using Rounding to Odd. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 57(4), 462-471. doi:10.1109/tc.2007.70819Wiesenberger, M., Einkemmer, L., Held, M., Gutierrez-Milla, A., Sáez, X., & Iakymchuk, R. (2019). Reproducibility, accuracy and performance of the Feltor code and library on parallel computer architectures. Computer Physics Communications, 238, 145-156. doi:10.1016/j.cpc.2018.12.006Fousse, L., Hanrot, G., Lefèvre, V., Pélissier, P., & Zimmermann, P. (2007). MPFR. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 33(2), 13. doi:10.1145/1236463.1236468J. Demmel, H.D. Nguyen, Fast reproducible floating-point summation, in: Proceedings of ARITH-21, 2013, pp. 163–172.Ozaki, K., Ogita, T., Oishi, S., & Rump, S. M. (2011). Error-free transformations of matrix multiplication by using fast routines of matrix multiplication and its applications. Numerical Algorithms, 59(1), 95-118. doi:10.1007/s11075-011-9478-1Carson, E., & Higham, N. J. (2018). Accelerating the Solution of Linear Systems by Iterative Refinement in Three Precisions. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 40(2), A817-A847. doi:10.1137/17m114081

Reproducibility Strategies for Parallel Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient

The Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method is often used in numerical simulations. While being widely used, the solver is also known for its lack of accuracy while computing the residual. In this article, we aim at a twofold goal: enhance the accuracy of the solver but also ensure its reproducibility in a message-passing implementation. We design and employ various strategies starting from the ExBLAS approach (through preserving every bit of information until final rounding) to its more lightweight performance-oriented variant (through expanding the intermediate precision). These algorithmic strategies are reinforced with programmability suggestions to assure deterministic executions. Finally, we verify these strategies on modern HPC systems: both versions deliver reproducible number of iterations, residuals, direct errors, and vector-solutions for the overhead of only 29 % (ExBLAS) and 4 % (lightweight) on 768 processes

Analysing and bounding numerical error in spiking neural network simulations

This study explores how numerical error occurs in simulations of spiking neural network models, and also how this error propagates through the simulation, changing its observed behaviour. The issue of non-reproducibility in parallel spiking neural network simulations is illustrated, and a method to bound all possible trajectories is discussed. The base method used in this study is known as mixed interval and affine arithmetic (mixed IA/AA), but some extra modifications are made to improve the tightness of the error bounds. I introduce Arpra, my new software, which is an arbitrary precision range analysis library, based on the GNU MPFR library. It improves on other implementations by enabling computations in custom floating-point precisions, and reduces the overhead rounding error of mixed IA/AA by computing in extended precision internally. It also implements a new error trimming technique, which reduces the error term whilst preserving correct boundaries. Arpra also implements deviation term condensing functions, which can reduce the number of floating-point operations per function significantly. Arpra is tested by simulating the Hénon map dynamical system, and found to produce tighter ranges than those of INTLAB, an alternative mixed IA/AA implementation. Arpra is used to bound the trajectories of fan-in spiking neural network simulations. Despite performing better than interval arithmetic, the mixed IA/AA method used by Arpra is shown to be inadequate for bounding the simulation trajectories, due to the highly nonlinear nature of spiking neural networks. A stability analysis of the neural network model is performed, and it is found that error boundaries are moderately tight in non-spiking regions of state space, where linear dynamics dominate, but error boundaries explode in spiking regions of state space, where nonlinear dynamics dominate

Rounding error using low precision approximate random variables

For numerical approximations to stochastic differential equations using the Euler Maruyama scheme, we propose incorporating approximate random variables computed using low precisions, such as single and half precision. We propose and justify a model for the rounding error incurred, and produce an average case error bound for two and four way differences, appropriate for regular and nested multilevel Monte Carlo estimations. Our rounding error model recovers and extends the statistical model by Arciniega and Allen [1], while bounding the size systematic and biased rounding errors are permitted to be. By considering the variance structure of multilevel Monte Carlo correction terms in various precisions with and without a Kahan compensated summation, we compute the potential speed ups offered from the various precisions. We find single precision offers the potential for approximate speed improvements by a factor of 7 across a wide span of discretisation levels. Half precision offers comparable improvements for several levels of coarse simulations, and even offers improvements by a factor of 10–12 for the very coarsest few levels, which are likely to dominate higher order methods such as the Milstein scheme

Full QCD on APE100 Machines

We present the first tests and results from a study of QCD with two flavours of dynamical Wilson fermions using the Hybrid Monte Carlo Algorithm (HMCA) on APE100 machines.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, 13 PS figures not include