Evaluating Scalable Distributed Erlang for Scalability and Reliability

Large scale servers with hundreds of hosts and tens of thousands of cores are becoming common. To exploit these platforms software must be both scalable and reliable, and distributed actor languages like Erlang are a proven technology in this area. While distributed Erlang conceptually supports the engineering of large scale reliable systems, in practice it has some scalability limits that force developers to depart from the standard language mechanisms at scale. In earlier work we have explored these scalability limitations, and addressed them by providing a Scalable Distributed (SD) Erlang library that partitions the network of Erlang Virtual Machines (VMs) into scalable groups (s_groups). This paper presents the first systematic evaluation of SD Erlang s_groups and associated tools, and how they can be used. We present a comprehensive evaluation of the scalability and reliability of SD Erlang using three typical benchmarks and a case study. We demonstrate that s_groups improve the scalability of reliable and unreliable Erlang applications on up to 256 hosts (6,144 cores). We show that SD Erlang preserves the class-leading distributed Erlang reliability model, but scales far better than the standard model. We present a novel, systematic, and tool-supported approach for refactoring distributed Erlang applications into SD Erlang. We outline the new and improved monitoring, debugging and deployment tools for large scale SD Erlang applications. We demonstrate the scaling characteristics of key tools on systems comprising up to 10 K Erlang VMs

Classic and Agent-Based Evolutionary Heuristics for Shape Optimization of Rotating Discs

The article presents a metaheuristic solution for the problem of shape optimization of a rotating annular disc. Such discs are important structural components of e.g. jet engines, steam turbines or disc brakes. The design goal is to find the disc shape that would ensure its maximal carrying capacity (corresponding to the speed of rotation), which is a variational problem with the objective functional defined by L-infinity norm. Such a definition makes the problem impossible to solve using analytical methods so utilization of metaheuristics is necessary. We present different algorithms to solve the problem starting with a classic evolutionary one, followed by agent-based and hybrid agent-based memetic algorithms, which are the main focus of this paper. The reason for this is that agent-based computing systems proved to be versatile as an optimization technique being especially efficient for the problems with complex fitness functions. The obtained experimental results encourage further application of such an approach to similar engineering problems

Desynchronization of simulation and optimization algorithms in HPC Environment

Need for scalability of an algorithm is essential, when one wants to utilize HPC infrastructure in an efficient and reasonable way. In such infrastructures, synchronization affects the efficiency of the parallel algorithms. However, one can consider introducing certain means of desynchronization in order to increase scalability. Allowing for omitting or delaying certain messages, can be easily accepted in the case of metaheuristics. Furthermore, some simulations can also follow this pattern and handle bigger environments. The paper presents a short survey of desynchronization idea, pointing out already obtained results or sketching out the future work focused on scaling the parallel and distributed computing or simulation algorithms leveraging desynchronization

GPGPU for Difficult Black-box Problems

AbstractDifficult black-box problems arise in many scientific and industrial areas. In this paper, efficient use of a hardware accelerator to implement dedicated solvers for such problems is discussed and studied based on an example of Golomb Ruler problem. The actual solution of the problem is shown based on evolutionary and memetic algorithms accelerated on GPGPU. The presented results prove that GPGPU outperforms CPU in some memetic algorithms which can be used as a part of hybrid algorithm of finding near optimal solutions of Golomb Ruler problem. The presented research is a part of building heterogenous parallel algorithm for difficult black-box Golomb Ruler problem

Extending the ‘Open-Closed Principle’ to automated algorithm configuration

Metaheuristics are an effective and diverse class of optimization algorithms: a means of obtaining solutions of acceptable quality for otherwise intractable problems. The selection, construction, and configuration of a metaheuristic for a given problem has historically been a manually intensive process based on experience, experimentation, and reasoning by metaphor. More recently, there has been interest in automating the process of algorithm configuration. In this paper, we identify shared state as an inhibitor of progress for such automation. To solve this problem, we introduce the Automated Open Closed Principle (AOCP), which stipulates design requirements for unintrusive reuse of algorithm frameworks and automated assembly of algorithms from an extensible palette of components. We demonstrate how the AOCP enables a greater degree of automation than previously possible via an example implementation.PostprintPeer reviewe

Refactoring GrPPI:Generic Refactoring for Generic Parallelism in C++

Funding: EU Horizon 2020 project, TeamPlay (https://www.teamplay-xh2020.eu), Grant Number 779882, UK EPSRC Discovery, grant number EP/P020631/1, and Madrid Regional Government, CABAHLA-CM (ConvergenciA Big dAta-Hpc: de Los sensores a las Aplicaciones) Grant Number S2018/TCS-4423.The Generic Reusable Parallel Pattern Interface (GrPPI) is a very useful abstraction over different parallel pattern libraries, allowing the programmer to write generic patterned parallel code that can easily be compiled to different backends such as FastFlow, OpenMP, Intel TBB and C++ threads. However, rewriting legacy code to use GrPPI still involves code transformations that can be highly non-trivial, especially for programmers who are not experts in parallelism. This paper describes software refactorings to semi-automatically introduce instances of GrPPI patterns into sequential C++ code, as well as safety checking static analysis mechanisms which verify that introducing patterns into the code does not introduce concurrency-related bugs such as race conditions. We demonstrate the refactorings and safety-checking mechanisms on four simple benchmark applications, showing that we are able to obtain, with little effort, GrPPI-based parallel versions that accomplish good speedups (comparable to those of manually-produced parallel versions) using different pattern backends.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Programming Languages for Data-Intensive HPC Applications: a Systematic Mapping Study

A major challenge in modelling and simulation is the need to combine expertise in both software technologies and a given scientific domain. When High-Performance Computing (HPC) is required to solve a scientific problem, software development becomes a problematic issue. Considering the complexity of the software for HPC, it is useful to identify programming languages that can be used to alleviate this issue. Because the existing literature on the topic of HPC is very dispersed, we performed a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) in the context of the European COST Action cHiPSet. This literature study maps characteristics of various programming languages for data-intensive HPC applications, including category, typical user profiles, effectiveness, and type of articles. We organised the SMS in two phases. In the first phase, relevant articles are identified employing an automated keyword-based search in eight digital libraries. This lead to an initial sample of 420 papers, which was then narrowed down in a second phase by human inspection of article abstracts, titles and keywords to 152 relevant articles published in the period 2006–2018. The analysis of these articles enabled us to identify 26 programming languages referred to in 33 of relevant articles. We compared the outcome of the mapping study with results of our questionnaire-based survey that involved 57 HPC experts. The mapping study and the survey revealed that the desired features of programming languages for data-intensive HPC applications are portability, performance and usability. Furthermore, we observed that the majority of the programming languages used in the context of data-intensive HPC applications are text-based general-purpose programming languages. Typically these have a steep learning curve, which makes them difficult to adopt. We believe that the outcome of this study will inspire future research and development in programming languages for data-intensive HPC applications.Additional co-authors: Sabri Pllana, Ana Respício, José Simão, Luís Veiga, Ari Vis

The scalability of reliable computation in Erlang

With the advent of many-core architectures, scalability is a key property for programming languages. Actor-based frameworks like Erlang are fundamentally scalable, but in practice they have some scalability limitations. The RELEASE project aims to scale the Erlang's radical concurrency-oriented programming paradigm to build reliable general-purpose software, such as server-based systems, on emergent commodity architectures with 10,000 cores. The RELEASE consortium works to scale Erlang at the virtual machine, language level, infrastructure levels, and to supply profiling and refactoring tools. This research contributes to the RELEASE project at the language level. Firstly, we study the provision of scalable persistent storage options for Erlang. We articulate the requirements for scalable and available persistent storage, and evaluate four popular Erlang DBMSs against these requirements. We investigate the scalability limits of the Riak NoSQL DBMS using Basho Bench up to 100 nodes on the Kalkyl cluster and establish for the first time scientifically the scalability limit of Riak as 60 nodes, thereby confirming developer folklore. We design and implement DE-Bench, a scalable fault-tolerant peer-to-peer benchmarking tool that measures the throughput and latency of distributed Erlang commands on a cluster of Erlang nodes. We employ DE-Bench to investigate the scalability limits of distributed Erlang on up to 150 nodes and 1200 cores. Our results demonstrate that the frequency of global commands limits the scalability of distributed Erlang. We also show that distributed Erlang scales linearly up to 150 nodes and 1200 cores with relatively heavy data and computation loads when no global commands are used. As part of the RELEASE project, the Glasgow University team has developed Scalable Distributed Erlang (SD Erlang) to address the scalability limits of distributed Erlang. We evaluate SD Erlang by designing and implementing the first ever demonstrators for SD Erlang, i.e. DE-Bench, Orbit and Ant Colony Optimisation(ACO). We employ DE-Bench to evaluate the performance and scalability of group operations in SD-Erlang up to 100 nodes. Our results show that the alternatives SD-Erlang offers for global commands (i.e. group commands) scale linearly up to 100 nodes. We also develop and evaluate an SD-Erlang implementation of Orbit, a symbolic computing kernel and a generalization of a transitive closure computation. Our evaluation results show that SD Erlang Orbit outperforms the distributed Erlang Orbit on 160 nodes and 1280 cores. Moreover, we develop a reliable distributed version of ACO and show that the reliability of ACO limits its scalability in traditional distributed Erlang. We use SD-Erlang to improve the scalability of the reliable ACO by eliminating global commands and avoiding full mesh connectivity between nodes. We show that SD Erlang reduces the network traffic between nodes in an Erlang cluster effectively

Theoretical and Computational Research in Various Scheduling Models

Nine manuscripts were published in this Special Issue on “Theoretical and Computational Research in Various Scheduling Models, 2021” of the MDPI Mathematics journal, covering a wide range of topics connected to the theory and applications of various scheduling models and their extensions/generalizations. These topics include a road network maintenance project, cost reduction of the subcontracted resources, a variant of the relocation problem, a network of activities with generally distributed durations through a Markov chain, idea on how to improve the return loading rate problem by integrating the sub-tour reversal approach with the method of the theory of constraints, an extended solution method for optimizing the bi-objective no-idle permutation flowshop scheduling problem, the burn-in (B/I) procedure, the Pareto-scheduling problem with two competing agents, and three preemptive Pareto-scheduling problems with two competing agents, among others. We hope that the book will be of interest to those working in the area of various scheduling problems and provide a bridge to facilitate the interaction between researchers and practitioners in scheduling questions. Although discrete mathematics is a common method to solve scheduling problems, the further development of this method is limited due to the lack of general principles, which poses a major challenge in this research field