46,490 research outputs found
PT-Scotch: A tool for efficient parallel graph ordering
The parallel ordering of large graphs is a difficult problem, because on the
one hand minimum degree algorithms do not parallelize well, and on the other
hand the obtainment of high quality orderings with the nested dissection
algorithm requires efficient graph bipartitioning heuristics, the best
sequential implementations of which are also hard to parallelize. This paper
presents a set of algorithms, implemented in the PT-Scotch software package,
which allows one to order large graphs in parallel, yielding orderings the
quality of which is only slightly worse than the one of state-of-the-art
sequential algorithms. Our implementation uses the classical nested dissection
approach but relies on several novel features to solve the parallel graph
bipartitioning problem. Thanks to these improvements, PT-Scotch produces
consistently better orderings than ParMeTiS on large numbers of processors
Dynamic load balancing in parallel KD-tree k-means
One among the most influential and popular data mining methods is the k-Means algorithm for cluster analysis.
Techniques for improving the efficiency of k-Means have been
largely explored in two main directions. The amount of computation can be significantly reduced by adopting geometrical constraints and an efficient data structure, notably a multidimensional binary search tree (KD-Tree). These techniques allow to reduce the number of distance computations the algorithm performs at each iteration. A second direction is parallel processing, where data and computation loads are distributed over many processing nodes. However, little work has been done to provide a parallel formulation of the efficient sequential techniques based on KD-Trees. Such approaches are expected to have an irregular distribution of computation load and can suffer from load imbalance. This issue has so far limited the adoption of these efficient k-Means variants in parallel computing environments. In this work, we provide a parallel formulation of the KD-Tree based k-Means algorithm for distributed memory systems and address its load balancing
issue. Three solutions have been developed and tested. Two
approaches are based on a static partitioning of the data set and a third solution incorporates a dynamic load balancing policy
From Instantly Decodable to Random Linear Network Coding
Our primary goal in this paper is to traverse the performance gap between two
linear network coding schemes: random linear network coding (RLNC) and
instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) in terms of throughput and decoding
delay. We first redefine the concept of packet generation and use it to
partition a block of partially-received data packets in a novel way, based on
the coding sets in an IDNC solution. By varying the generation size, we obtain
a general coding framework which consists of a series of coding schemes, with
RLNC and IDNC identified as two extreme cases. We then prove that the
throughput and decoding delay performance of all coding schemes in this coding
framework are bounded between the performance of RLNC and IDNC and hence
throughput-delay tradeoff becomes possible. We also propose implementations of
this coding framework to further improve its throughput and decoding delay
performance, to manage feedback frequency and coding complexity, or to achieve
in-block performance adaption. Extensive simulations are then provided to
verify the performance of the proposed coding schemes and their
implementations.Comment: 30 pages with double space, 14 color figure
Beyond Reuse Distance Analysis: Dynamic Analysis for Characterization of Data Locality Potential
Emerging computer architectures will feature drastically decreased flops/byte
(ratio of peak processing rate to memory bandwidth) as highlighted by recent
studies on Exascale architectural trends. Further, flops are getting cheaper
while the energy cost of data movement is increasingly dominant. The
understanding and characterization of data locality properties of computations
is critical in order to guide efforts to enhance data locality. Reuse distance
analysis of memory address traces is a valuable tool to perform data locality
characterization of programs. A single reuse distance analysis can be used to
estimate the number of cache misses in a fully associative LRU cache of any
size, thereby providing estimates on the minimum bandwidth requirements at
different levels of the memory hierarchy to avoid being bandwidth bound.
However, such an analysis only holds for the particular execution order that
produced the trace. It cannot estimate potential improvement in data locality
through dependence preserving transformations that change the execution
schedule of the operations in the computation. In this article, we develop a
novel dynamic analysis approach to characterize the inherent locality
properties of a computation and thereby assess the potential for data locality
enhancement via dependence preserving transformations. The execution trace of a
code is analyzed to extract a computational directed acyclic graph (CDAG) of
the data dependences. The CDAG is then partitioned into convex subsets, and the
convex partitioning is used to reorder the operations in the execution trace to
enhance data locality. The approach enables us to go beyond reuse distance
analysis of a single specific order of execution of the operations of a
computation in characterization of its data locality properties. It can serve a
valuable role in identifying promising code regions for manual transformation,
as well as assessing the effectiveness of compiler transformations for data
locality enhancement. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach using a
number of benchmarks, including case studies where the potential shown by the
analysis is exploited to achieve lower data movement costs and better
performance.Comment: Transaction on Architecture and Code Optimization (2014
Recent Advances in Graph Partitioning
We survey recent trends in practical algorithms for balanced graph
partitioning together with applications and future research directions
Optimal column layout for hybrid workloads
Data-intensive analytical applications need to support both efficient reads and writes. However, what is usually a good data layout for an update-heavy workload, is not well-suited for a read-mostly one and vice versa. Modern analytical data systems rely on columnar layouts and employ delta stores to inject new data and updates. We show that for hybrid workloads we can achieve close to one order of magnitude better performance by tailoring the column layout design to the data and query workload. Our approach navigates the possible design space of the physical layout: it organizes each column’s data by determining the number of partitions, their corresponding sizes and ranges, and the amount of buffer space and how it is allocated. We frame these design decisions as an optimization problem that, given workload knowledge and performance requirements, provides an optimal physical layout for the workload at hand. To evaluate this work, we build an in-memory storage engine, Casper, and we show that it outperforms state-of-the-art data layouts of analytical systems for hybrid workloads. Casper delivers up to 2.32x higher throughput for update-intensive workloads and up to 2.14x higher throughput for hybrid workloads. We further show how to make data layout decisions robust to workload variation by carefully selecting the input of the optimization.http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol12/p2393-athanassoulis.pdfPublished versionPublished versio
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