Group implicit concurrent algorithms in nonlinear structural dynamics

During the 70's and 80's, considerable effort was devoted to developing efficient and reliable time stepping procedures for transient structural analysis. Mathematically, the equations governing this type of problems are generally stiff, i.e., they exhibit a wide spectrum in the linear range. The algorithms best suited to this type of applications are those which accurately integrate the low frequency content of the response without necessitating the resolution of the high frequency modes. This means that the algorithms must be unconditionally stable, which in turn rules out explicit integration. The most exciting possibility in the algorithms development area in recent years has been the advent of parallel computers with multiprocessing capabilities. So, this work is mainly concerned with the development of parallel algorithms in the area of structural dynamics. A primary objective is to devise unconditionally stable and accurate time stepping procedures which lend themselves to an efficient implementation in concurrent machines. Some features of the new computer architecture are summarized. A brief survey of current efforts in the area is presented. A new class of concurrent procedures, or Group Implicit algorithms is introduced and analyzed. The numerical simulation shows that GI algorithms hold considerable promise for application in coarse grain as well as medium grain parallel computers

A Class of Parallel Tiled Linear Algebra Algorithms for Multicore Architectures

As multicore systems continue to gain ground in the High Performance Computing world, linear algebra algorithms have to be reformulated or new algorithms have to be developed in order to take advantage of the architectural features on these new processors. Fine grain parallelism becomes a major requirement and introduces the necessity of loose synchronization in the parallel execution of an operation. This paper presents an algorithm for the Cholesky, LU and QR factorization where the operations can be represented as a sequence of small tasks that operate on square blocks of data. These tasks can be dynamically scheduled for execution based on the dependencies among them and on the availability of computational resources. This may result in an out of order execution of the tasks which will completely hide the presence of intrinsically sequential tasks in the factorization. Performance comparisons are presented with the LAPACK algorithms where parallelism can only be exploited at the level of the BLAS operations and vendor implementations

QR Factorization of Tall and Skinny Matrices in a Grid Computing Environment

Previous studies have reported that common dense linear algebra operations do not achieve speed up by using multiple geographical sites of a computational grid. Because such operations are the building blocks of most scientific applications, conventional supercomputers are still strongly predominant in high-performance computing and the use of grids for speeding up large-scale scientific problems is limited to applications exhibiting parallelism at a higher level. We have identified two performance bottlenecks in the distributed memory algorithms implemented in ScaLAPACK, a state-of-the-art dense linear algebra library. First, because ScaLAPACK assumes a homogeneous communication network, the implementations of ScaLAPACK algorithms lack locality in their communication pattern. Second, the number of messages sent in the ScaLAPACK algorithms is significantly greater than other algorithms that trade flops for communication. In this paper, we present a new approach for computing a QR factorization -- one of the main dense linear algebra kernels -- of tall and skinny matrices in a grid computing environment that overcomes these two bottlenecks. Our contribution is to articulate a recently proposed algorithm (Communication Avoiding QR) with a topology-aware middleware (QCG-OMPI) in order to confine intensive communications (ScaLAPACK calls) within the different geographical sites. An experimental study conducted on the Grid'5000 platform shows that the resulting performance increases linearly with the number of geographical sites on large-scale problems (and is in particular consistently higher than ScaLAPACK's).Comment: Accepted at IPDPS10. (IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium 2010 in Atlanta, GA, USA.

Solution of partial differential equations on vector and parallel computers

The present status of numerical methods for partial differential equations on vector and parallel computers was reviewed. The relevant aspects of these computers are discussed and a brief review of their development is included, with particular attention paid to those characteristics that influence algorithm selection. Both direct and iterative methods are given for elliptic equations as well as explicit and implicit methods for initial boundary value problems. The intent is to point out attractive methods as well as areas where this class of computer architecture cannot be fully utilized because of either hardware restrictions or the lack of adequate algorithms. Application areas utilizing these computers are briefly discussed

Software Support for Irregular and Loosely Synchronous Problems

A large class of scientific and engineering applications may be classified as irregular and loosely synchronous from the perspective of parallel processing. We present a partial classification of such problems. This classification has motivated us to enhance Fortran D to provide language support for irregular, loosely synchronous problems. We present techniques for parallelization of such problems in the context of Fortran D

Software Support for Irregular and Loosely Synchronous Problems

A large class of scientific and engineering applications may be classified as irregular and loosely synchronous from the perspective of parallel processing. We present a partial classification of such problems. This classification has motivated us to enhance Fortran D to provide language support for irregular, loosely synchronous problems. We present techniques for parallelization of such problems in the context of Fortran D

Automated problem scheduling and reduction of synchronization delay effects

It is anticipated that in order to make effective use of many future high performance architectures, programs will have to exhibit at least a medium grained parallelism. A framework is presented for partitioning very sparse triangular systems of linear equations that is designed to produce favorable preformance results in a wide variety of parallel architectures. Efficient methods for solving these systems are of interest because: (1) they provide a useful model problem for use in exploring heuristics for the aggregation, mapping and scheduling of relatively fine grained computations whose data dependencies are specified by directed acrylic graphs, and (2) because such efficient methods can find direct application in the development of parallel algorithms for scientific computation. Simple expressions are derived that describe how to schedule computational work with varying degrees of granularity. The Encore Multimax was used as a hardware simulator to investigate the performance effects of using the partitioning techniques presented in shared memory architectures with varying relative synchronization costs

Strategies to optimize the LU factorization algorithm on multicore computers

The number of cores in multicore computers has an irreversible tendency to increase. Also, computers with multiple sockets to insert multicore chips are based on a complex hardware design and are becoming more common. To parallelize the algorithms that run on this type of computers in order to obtain a higher performance rate, is a goal that can only be achieved by taking into account hardware architecture. As hardware evolves, so must software. This leads to old parallelization strategies quickly become obsolete. This paper presents a series of alternatives for parallelization the LU factorization algorithm and its results intended to running on a multicore system. Simple strategies lead to poor results. This study presents complex strategies that merge double levels of parallelism with asynchronous scheduling whose results reach up to the State-of-the-art in the field and even go further.http://hpc2013.hpclatam.org/talks.html#fullpaper17Fil: Soler, Janet. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Computación; Argentina.Fil: Ortiz, Javier. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Computación; Argentina.Fil: Wolfmann, Aaron Gustavo. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Computación; Argentina.Ciencias de la Computació

HPC algorithms for nonnegative decompositions

Muchos problemas procedentes de aplicaciones del mundo real pueden ser modelados como problemas matemáticos con magnitudes no negativas, y por tanto, las soluciones de estos problemas matemáticos solo tienen sentido si son no negativas. Estas magnitudes no negativas pueden ser, por ejemplo, las frecuencias en una señal sonora, las intensidades de los pixeles de una imagen, etc. Algunos de estos problemas pueden ser modelados utilizando un sistema de ecuaciones lineales sobredeterminado. Cuando la solución de dicho problema debe ser restringida a valores no negativos, aparece un problema llamado problema de mínimos cuadrados no negativos (NNLS por sus siglas en inglés). La solución de dicho problema tiene múltiples aplicaciones en ciencia e ingeniería. Otra descomposición no negativa importante es la Factorización de Matrices No negativas (NMF por sus siglas en inglés). La NMF es una herramienta muy popular utilizada en varios campos, como por ejemplo: clasificación de documentos, aprendizaje automático, análisis de imagen o separación de señales sonoras. Esta factorización intenta aproximar una matriz no negativa con el producto de dos matrices no negativas de menor tamaño, creando habitualmente representaciones por partes de los datos originales. Los algoritmos diseñados para calcular la solución de estos dos problemas no negativos tienen un elevado coste computacional, y debido a ese elevado coste, estas descomposiciones pueden beneficiarse mucho del uso de técnicas de Computación de Altas Prestaciones (HPC por sus siglas en inglés). Estos sistemas computacionales de altas prestaciones incluyen desde los modernos computadores multinucleo a lo último en aceleradores de calculo (Unidades de Procesamiento Gráfico (GPU), Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC), etc.). Para obtener el máximo rendimiento de estos sistemas, los desarrolladores deben utilizar tecnologías software tales como la programación paralela, la vectoración o el uso de librerías de computación altas prestaciones. A pesar de que existen diversos algoritmos para calcular la NMF y resolver el problema NNLS, no todos ellos disponen de una implementación paralela y eficiente. Además, es muy interesante reunir diversos algoritmos con propiedades diferentes en una sola librería computacional. Esta tesis presenta una librería computacional de altas prestaciones que contiene implementaciones paralelas y eficientes de los mejores algoritmos existentes actualmente para calcular la NMF. Además la tesis también incluye una comparación experimental entre las diferentes implementaciones presentadas. Esta librería centrada en el cálculo de la NMF soporta múltiples arquitecturas tales como CPUs multinucleo, GPUs e Intel MIC. El objetivo de esta librería es ofrecer un abanico de algoritmos eficientes para ayudar a científicos, ingenieros o cualquier tipo de profesionales que necesitan hacer uso de la NMF. Otro problema abordado en esta tesis es la actualización de las factorizaciones no negativas. El problema de la actualización se ha estudiado tanto para la solución del problema NNLS como para el calculo de la NMF. Existen problemas no negativos cuya solución es próxima a otros problemas que ya han sido resueltos, el problema de la actualización consiste en aprovechar la solución de un problema A que ya ha sido resuelto, para obtener la solución de un problema B cercano al problema A. Utilizando esta aproximación, el problema B puede ser resuelto más rápido que si se tuviera que resolver sin aprovechar la solución conocida del problema A. En esta tesis se presenta una metodología algorítmica para resolver ambos problemas de actualización: la actualización de la solución del problema NNLS y la actualización de la NMF. Además se presentan evaluaciones empíricas de las soluciones presentadas para ambos problemas. Los resultados de estas evaluaciones muestran que los algoritmos propuestos son más rápidos que resoMolts problemes procedents de aplicacions del mon real poden ser modelats com problemes matemàtics en magnituts no negatives, i per tant, les solucions de estos problemes matemàtics només tenen sentit si son no negatives. Estes magnituts no negatives poden ser, per eixemple, la concentració dels elements en un compost químic, les freqüències en una senyal sonora, les intensitats dels pixels de una image, etc. Alguns d'estos problemes poden ser modelats utilisant un sistema d'equacions llineals sobredeterminat. Quant la solució de este problema deu ser restringida a valors no negatius, apareix un problema nomenat problema de mínims quadrats no negatius (NNLS per les seues sigles en anglés). La solució de este problema te múltiples aplicacions en ciències i ingenieria. Un atra descomposició no negativa important es la Factorisació de Matrius No negatives(NMF per les seues sigles en anglés). La NMF es una ferramenta molt popular utilisada en diversos camps, com per eixemple: classificacio de documents, aprenentage automàtic, anàlisis de image o separació de senyals sonores. Esta factorisació intenta aproximar una matriu no negativa en el producte de dos matrius no negatives de menor tamany, creant habitualment representacions a parts de les dades originals. Els algoritmes dissenyats per a calcular la solució de estos dos problemes no negatius tenen un elevat cost computacional, i degut a este elevat cost, estes descomposicions poden beneficiar-se molt del us de tècniques de Computació de Altes Prestacions (HPC per les seues sigles en anglés). Estos sistemes de computació de altes prestacions inclouen des dels moderns computadors multinucli a lo últim en acceleradors de càlcul (Unitats de Processament Gràfic (GPU), Intel Many Core (MIC), etc.). Per a obtindre el màxim rendiment de estos sistemes, els desenrolladors deuen utilisar tecnologies software tals com la programació paralela, la vectorisació o el us de llibreries de computació de altes prestacions. A pesar de que existixen diversos algoritmes per a calcular la NMF i resoldre el problema NNLS, no tots ells disponen de una implementació paralela i eficient. Ademés, es molt interessant reunir diversos algoritmes en propietats diferents en una sola llibreria computacional. Esta tesis presenta una llibreria computacional de altes prestacions que conté implementacions paraleles i eficients dels millors algoritmes existents per a calcular la NMF. Ademés, la tesis també inclou una comparació experimental entre les diferents implementacions presentades. Esta llibreria centrada en el càlcul de la NMF soporta diverses arquitectures tals com CPUs multinucli, GPUs i Intel MIC. El objectiu de esta llibreria es oferir una varietat de algoritmes eficients per a ajudar a científics, ingeniers o qualsevol tipo de professionals que necessiten utilisar la NMF. Un atre problema abordat en esta tesis es la actualisació de les factorisacions no negatives. El problema de la actualisació se ha estudiat tant per a la solució del problema NNLS com per a el càlcul de la NMF. Existixen problemes no negatius la solució dels quals es pròxima a atres problemes no negatius que ya han sigut resolts, el problema de la actualisació consistix en aprofitar la solució de un problema A que ya ha sigut resolt, per a obtindre la solució de un problema B pròxim al problema A. Utilisant esta aproximació, el problema B pot ser resolt molt mes ràpidament que si tinguera que ser resolt des de 0 sense aprofitar la solució coneguda del problema A. En esta tesis es presenta una metodologia algorítmica per a resoldre els dos problemes de actualisació: la actualisació de la solució del problema NNLS i la actualisació de la NMF. Ademés es presenten evaluacions empíriques de les solucions presentades per als dos problemes. Els resultats de estes evaluacions mostren que els algoritmes proposts son més ràpits que resoldre el problema des de 0 en tots elsMany real world-problems can be modelled as mathematical problems with nonnegative magnitudes, and, therefore, the solutions of these problems are meaningful only if their values are nonnegative. Examples of these nonnegative magnitudes are the concentration of components in a chemical compound, frequencies in an audio signal, pixel intensities on an image, etc. Some of these problems can be modelled to an overdetermined system of linear equations. When the solution of this system of equations should be constrained to nonnegative values, a new problem arises. This problem is called the Nonnegative Least Squares (NNLS) problem, and its solution has multiple applications in science and engineering, especially for solving optimization problems with nonnegative restrictions. Another important nonnegativity constrained decomposition is the Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF). The NMF is a very popular tool in many fields such as document clustering, data mining, machine learning, image analysis, chemical analysis, and audio source separation. This factorization tries to approximate a nonnegative data matrix with the product of two smaller nonnegative matrices, usually creating parts based representations of the original data. The algorithms that are designed to compute the solution of these two nonnegative problems have a high computational cost. Due to this high cost, these decompositions can benefit from the extra performance obtained using High Performance Computing (HPC) techniques. Nowadays, there are very powerful computational systems that offer high performance and can be used to solve extremely complex problems in science and engineering. From modern multicore CPUs to the newest computational accelerators (Graphics Processing Units(GPU), Intel Many Integrated Core(MIC), etc.), the performance of these systems keeps increasing continuously. To make the most of the hardware capabilities of these HPC systems, developers should use software technologies such as parallel programming, vectorization, or high performance computing libraries. While there are several algorithms for computing the NMF and for solving the NNLS problem, not all of them have an efficient parallel implementation available. Furthermore, it is very interesting to group several algorithms with different properties into a single computational library. This thesis presents a high-performance computational library with efficient parallel implementations of the best algorithms to compute the NMF in the current state of the art. In addition, an experimental comparison between the different implementations is presented. This library is focused on the computation of the NMF supporting multiple architectures like multicore CPUs, GPUs and Intel MIC. The goal of the library is to offer a full suit of algorithms to help researchers, engineers or professionals that need to use the NMF. Another problem that is dealt with in this thesis is the updating of nonnegative decompositions. The updating problem has been studied for both the solution of the NNLS problem and the NMF. Sometimes there are nonnegative problems that are close to other nonnegative problems that have already been solved. The updating problem tries to take advantage of the solution of a problem A, that has already been solved in order to obtain a solution of a new problem B, which is closely related to problem A. With this approach, problem B can be solved faster than solving it from scratch and not taking advantage of the already known solution of problem A. In this thesis, an algorithmic scheme is proposed for both the updating of the solution of NNLS problems and the updating of the NMF. Empirical evaluations for both updating problems are also presented. The results show that the proposed algorithms are faster than solving the problems from scratch in all of the tested cases.San Juan Sebastián, P. (2018). HPC algorithms for nonnegative decompositions [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/11306