Improving the scalability of parallel N-body applications with an event driven constraint based execution model

The scalability and efficiency of graph applications are significantly constrained by conventional systems and their supporting programming models. Technology trends like multicore, manycore, and heterogeneous system architectures are introducing further challenges and possibilities for emerging application domains such as graph applications. This paper explores the space of effective parallel execution of ephemeral graphs that are dynamically generated using the Barnes-Hut algorithm to exemplify dynamic workloads. The workloads are expressed using the semantics of an Exascale computing execution model called ParalleX. For comparison, results using conventional execution model semantics are also presented. We find improved load balancing during runtime and automatic parallelism discovery improving efficiency using the advanced semantics for Exascale computing.Comment: 11 figure

Distributed Training Large-Scale Deep Architectures

Scale of data and scale of computation infrastructures together enable the current deep learning renaissance. However, training large-scale deep architectures demands both algorithmic improvement and careful system configuration. In this paper, we focus on employing the system approach to speed up large-scale training. Via lessons learned from our routine benchmarking effort, we first identify bottlenecks and overheads that hinter data parallelism. We then devise guidelines that help practitioners to configure an effective system and fine-tune parameters to achieve desired speedup. Specifically, we develop a procedure for setting minibatch size and choosing computation algorithms. We also derive lemmas for determining the quantity of key components such as the number of GPUs and parameter servers. Experiments and examples show that these guidelines help effectively speed up large-scale deep learning training

Compilation techniques for irregular problems on parallel machines

Massively parallel computers have ushered in the era of teraflop computing. Even though large and powerful machines are being built, they are used by only a fraction of the computing community. The fundamental reason for this situation is that parallel machines are difficult to program. Development of compilers that automatically parallelize programs will greatly increase the use of these machines.;A large class of scientific problems can be categorized as irregular computations. In this class of computation, the data access patterns are known only at runtime, creating significant difficulties for a parallelizing compiler to generate efficient parallel codes. Some compilers with very limited abilities to parallelize simple irregular computations exist, but the methods used by these compilers fail for any non-trivial applications code.;This research presents development of compiler transformation techniques that can be used to effectively parallelize an important class of irregular programs. A central aim of these transformation techniques is to generate codes that aggressively prefetch data. Program slicing methods are used as a part of the code generation process. In this approach, a program written in a data-parallel language, such as HPF, is transformed so that it can be executed on a distributed memory machine. An efficient compiler runtime support system has been developed that performs data movement and software caching