On the Effect of using rCUDA to Provide CUDA Acceleration to Xen Virtual Machines

[EN] Nowadays, many data centers use virtual machines (VMs) in order to achieve a more efficient use of hardware resources. The use of VMs provides a reduction in equipment and maintenance expenses as well as a lower electricity consumption. Nevertheless, current virtualization solutions, such as Xen, do not easily provide graphics processing units (GPUs) to applications running in the virtualized domain with the flexibility usually required in data centers (i.e., managing virtual GPU instances and concurrently sharing them among several VMs). Therefore, the execution of GPU-accelerated applications within VMs is hindered by this lack of flexibility. In this regard, remote GPU virtualization solutions may address this concern. In this paper we analyze the use of the remote GPU virtualization mechanism to accelerate scientific applications running inside Xen VMs. We conduct our study with six different applications, namely CUDA-MEME, CUDASW++, GPU-BLAST, LAMMPS, a triangle count application, referred to as TRICO, and a synthetic benchmark used to emulate different application behaviors. Our experiments show that the use of remote GPU virtualization is a feasible approach to address the current concerns of sharing GPUs among several VMs, featuring a very low overhead if an InfiniBand fabric is already present in the cluster.This work was funded by the Generalitat Valenciana under Grant PROMETEO/2017/077. Authors are also grateful for the generous support provided by Mellanox Technologies Inc.Prades, J.; Reaño González, C.; Silla Jiménez, F. (2019). On the Effect of using rCUDA to Provide CUDA Acceleration to Xen Virtual Machines. 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Improving Performance and Energy Efficiency of Heterogeneous Systems with rCUDA

Tesis por compendio[ES] En la última década la utilización de la GPGPU (General Purpose computing in Graphics Processing Units; Computación de Propósito General en Unidades de Procesamiento Gráfico) se ha vuelto tremendamente popular en los centros de datos de todo el mundo. Las GPUs (Graphics Processing Units; Unidades de Procesamiento Gráfico) se han establecido como elementos aceleradores de cómputo que son usados junto a las CPUs formando sistemas heterogéneos. La naturaleza masivamente paralela de las GPUs, destinadas tradicionalmente al cómputo de gráficos, permite realizar operaciones numéricas con matrices de datos a gran velocidad debido al gran número de núcleos que integran y al gran ancho de banda de acceso a memoria que poseen. En consecuencia, aplicaciones de todo tipo de campos, tales como química, física, ingeniería, inteligencia artificial, ciencia de materiales, etc. que presentan este tipo de patrones de cómputo se ven beneficiadas, reduciendo drásticamente su tiempo de ejecución. En general, el uso de la aceleración del cómputo en GPUs ha significado un paso adelante y una revolución. Sin embargo, no está exento de problemas, tales como problemas de eficiencia energética, baja utilización de las GPUs, altos costes de adquisición y mantenimiento, etc. En esta tesis pretendemos analizar las principales carencias que presentan estos sistemas heterogéneos y proponer soluciones basadas en el uso de la virtualización remota de GPUs. Para ello hemos utilizado la herramienta rCUDA, desarrollada en la Universitat Politècnica de València, ya que multitud de publicaciones la avalan como el framework de virtualización remota de GPUs más avanzado de la actualidad. Los resutados obtenidos en esta tesis muestran que el uso de rCUDA en entornos de Cloud Computing incrementa el grado de libertad del sistema, ya que permite crear instancias virtuales de las GPUs físicas totalmente a medida de las necesidades de cada una de las máquinas virtuales. En entornos HPC (High Performance Computing; Computación de Altas Prestaciones), rCUDA también proporciona un mayor grado de flexibilidad de uso de las GPUs de todo el clúster de cómputo, ya que permite desacoplar totalmente la parte CPU de la parte GPU de las aplicaciones. Además, las GPUs pueden estar en cualquier nodo del clúster, independientemente del nodo en el que se está ejecutando la parte CPU de la aplicación. En general, tanto para Cloud Computing como en el caso de HPC, este mayor grado de flexibilidad se traduce en un aumento hasta 2x de la productividad de todo el sistema al mismo tiempo que se reduce el consumo energético en un 15%. Finalmente, también hemos desarrollado un mecanismo de migración de trabajos de la parte GPU de las aplicaciones que ha sido integrado dentro del framework rCUDA. Este mecanismo de migración ha sido evaluado y los resultados muestran claramente que, a cambio de una pequeña sobrecarga, alrededor de 400 milisegundos, en el tiempo de ejecución de las aplicaciones, es una potente herramienta con la que, de nuevo, aumentar la productividad y reducir el gasto energético del sistema. En resumen, en esta tesis se analizan los principales problemas derivados del uso de las GPUs como aceleradores de cómputo, tanto en entornos HPC como de Cloud Computing, y se demuestra cómo a través del uso del framework rCUDA, estos problemas pueden solucionarse. Además se desarrolla un potente mecanismo de migración de trabajos GPU, que integrado dentro del framework rCUDA, se convierte en una herramienta clave para los futuros planificadores de trabajos en clusters heterogéneos.[CA] En l'última dècada la utilització de la GPGPU(General Purpose computing in Graphics Processing Units; Computació de Propòsit General en Unitats de Processament Gràfic) s'ha tornat extremadament popular en els centres de dades de tot el món. Les GPUs (Graphics Processing Units; Unitats de Processament Gràfic) s'han establert com a elements acceleradors de còmput que s'utilitzen al costat de les CPUs formant sistemes heterogenis. La naturalesa massivament paral·lela de les GPUs, destinades tradicionalment al còmput de gràfics, permet realitzar operacions numèriques amb matrius de dades a gran velocitat degut al gran nombre de nuclis que integren i al gran ample de banda d'accés a memòria que posseeixen. En conseqüència, les aplicacions de tot tipus de camps, com ara química, física, enginyeria, intel·ligència artificial, ciència de materials, etc. que presenten aquest tipus de patrons de còmput es veuen beneficiades reduint dràsticament el seu temps d'execució. En general, l'ús de l'acceleració del còmput en GPUs ha significat un pas endavant i una revolució, però no està exempt de problemes, com ara poden ser problemes d'eficiència energètica, baixa utilització de les GPUs, alts costos d'adquisició i manteniment, etc. En aquesta tesi pretenem analitzar les principals mancances que presenten aquests sistemes heterogenis i proposar solucions basades en l'ús de la virtualització remota de GPUs. Per a això hem utilitzat l'eina rCUDA, desenvolupada a la Universitat Politècnica de València, ja que multitud de publicacions l'avalen com el framework de virtualització remota de GPUs més avançat de l'actualitat. Els resultats obtinguts en aquesta tesi mostren que l'ús de rCUDA en entorns de Cloud Computing incrementa el grau de llibertat del sistema, ja que permet crear instàncies virtuals de les GPUs físiques totalment a mida de les necessitats de cadascuna de les màquines virtuals. En entorns HPC (High Performance Computing; Computació d'Altes Prestacions), rCUDA també proporciona un major grau de flexibilitat en l'ús de les GPUs de tot el clúster de còmput, ja que permet desacoblar totalment la part CPU de la part GPU de les aplicacions. A més, les GPUs poden estar en qualsevol node del clúster, sense importar el node en el qual s'està executant la part CPU de l'aplicació. En general, tant per a Cloud Computing com en el cas del HPC, aquest major grau de flexibilitat es tradueix en un augment fins 2x de la productivitat de tot el sistema al mateix temps que es redueix el consum energètic en aproximadament un 15%. Finalment, també hem desenvolupat un mecanisme de migració de treballs de la part GPU de les aplicacions que ha estat integrat dins del framework rCUDA. Aquest mecanisme de migració ha estat avaluat i els resultats mostren clarament que, a canvi d'una petita sobrecàrrega, al voltant de 400 mil·lisegons, en el temps d'execució de les aplicacions, és una potent eina amb la qual, de nou, augmentar la productivitat i reduir la despesa energètica de sistema. En resum, en aquesta tesi s'analitzen els principals problemes derivats de l'ús de les GPUs com acceleradors de còmput, tant en entorns HPC com de Cloud Computing, i es demostra com a través de l'ús del framework rCUDA, aquests problemes poden solucionar-se. A més es desenvolupa un potent mecanisme de migració de treballs GPU, que integrat dins del framework rCUDA, esdevé una eina clau per als futurs planificadors de treballs en clústers heterogenis.[EN] In the last decade the use of GPGPU (General Purpose computing in Graphics Processing Units) has become extremely popular in data centers around the world. GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) have been established as computational accelerators that are used alongside CPUs to form heterogeneous systems. The massively parallel nature of GPUs, traditionally intended for graphics computing, allows to perform numerical operations with data arrays at high speed. This is achieved thanks to the large number of cores GPUs integrate and the large bandwidth of memory access. Consequently, applications of all kinds of fields, such as chemistry, physics, engineering, artificial intelligence, materials science, and so on, presenting this type of computational patterns are benefited by drastically reducing their execution time. In general, the use of computing acceleration provided by GPUs has meant a step forward and a revolution, but it is not without problems, such as energy efficiency problems, low utilization of GPUs, high acquisition and maintenance costs, etc. In this PhD thesis we aim to analyze the main shortcomings of these heterogeneous systems and propose solutions based on the use of remote GPU virtualization. To that end, we have used the rCUDA middleware, developed at Universitat Politècnica de València. Many publications support rCUDA as the most advanced remote GPU virtualization framework nowadays. The results obtained in this PhD thesis show that the use of rCUDA in Cloud Computing environments increases the degree of freedom of the system, as it allows to create virtual instances of the physical GPUs fully tailored to the needs of each of the virtual machines. In HPC (High Performance Computing) environments, rCUDA also provides a greater degree of flexibility in the use of GPUs throughout the computing cluster, as it allows the CPU part to be completely decoupled from the GPU part of the applications. In addition, GPUs can be on any node in the cluster, regardless of the node on which the CPU part of the application is running. In general, both for Cloud Computing and in the case of HPC, this greater degree of flexibility translates into an up to 2x increase in system-wide throughput while reducing energy consumption by approximately 15%. Finally, we have also developed a job migration mechanism for the GPU part of applications that has been integrated within the rCUDA middleware. This migration mechanism has been evaluated and the results clearly show that, in exchange for a small overhead of about 400 milliseconds in the execution time of the applications, it is a powerful tool with which, again, we can increase productivity and reduce energy foot print of the computing system. In summary, this PhD thesis analyzes the main problems arising from the use of GPUs as computing accelerators, both in HPC and Cloud Computing environments, and demonstrates how thanks to the use of the rCUDA middleware these problems can be addressed. In addition, a powerful GPU job migration mechanism is being developed, which, integrated within the rCUDA framework, becomes a key tool for future job schedulers in heterogeneous clusters.This work jointly supported by the Fundación Séneca (Agencia Regional de Ciencia y Tecnología, Región de Murcia) under grants (20524/PDC/18, 20813/PI/18 and 20988/PI/18) and by the Spanish MEC and European Commission FEDER under grants TIN2015-66972-C5-3-R, TIN2016-78799-P and CTQ2017-87974-R (AEI/FEDER, UE). We also thank NVIDIA for hardware donation under GPU Educational Center 2014-2016 and Research Center 2015-2016. The authors thankfully acknowledge the computer resources at CTE-POWER and the technical support provided by Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (RES-BCV-2018-3-0008). Furthermore, researchers from Universitat Politècnica de València are supported by the Generalitat Valenciana under Grant PROMETEO/2017/077. Authors are also grateful for the generous support provided by Mellanox Technologies Inc. Prof. Pradipta Purkayastha, from Department of Chemical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, is acknowledged for kindly providing the initial ligand and DNA structures.Prades Gasulla, J. (2021). Improving Performance and Energy Efficiency of Heterogeneous Systems with rCUDA [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/168081TESISCompendi

On the Benefits of the Remote GPU Virtualization Mechanism: the rCUDA Case

[EN] Graphics processing units (GPUs) are being adopted in many computing facilities given their extraordinary computing power, which makes it possible to accelerate many general purpose applications from different domains. However, GPUs also present several side effects, such as increased acquisition costs as well as larger space requirements. They also require more powerful energy supplies. Furthermore, GPUs still consume some amount of energy while idle, and their utilization is usually low for most workloads. In a similar way to virtual machines, the use of virtual GPUs may address the aforementioned concerns. In this regard, the remote GPU virtualization mechanism allows an application being executed in a node of the cluster to transparently use the GPUs installed at other nodes. Moreover, this technique allows to share the GPUs present in the computing facility among the applications being executed in the cluster. In this way, several applications being executed in different (or the same) cluster nodes can share 1 or more GPUs located in other nodes of the cluster. Sharing GPUs should increase overall GPU utilization, thus reducing the negative impact of the side effects mentioned before. Reducing the total amount of GPUs installed in the cluster may also be possible. In this paper, we explore some of the benefits that remote GPU virtualization brings to clusters. For instance, this mechanism allows an application to use all the GPUs present in the computing facility. Another benefit of this technique is that cluster throughput, measured as jobs completed per time unit, is noticeably increased when this technique is used. In this regard, cluster throughput can be doubled for some workloads. Furthermore, in addition to increase overall GPU utilization, total energy consumption can be reduced up to 40%. This may be key in the context of exascale computing facilities, which present an important energy constraint. Other benefits are related to the cloud computing domain, where a GPU can be easily shared among several virtual machines. Finally, GPU migration (and therefore server consolidation) is one more benefit of this novel technique.Generalitat Valenciana, Grant/Award Number: PROMETEOII/2013/009; MINECO and FEDER, Grant/Award Number: TIN2014-53495-RSilla Jiménez, F.; Iserte Agut, S.; Reaño González, C.; Prades, J. (2017). On the Benefits of the Remote GPU Virtualization Mechanism: the rCUDA Case. 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CUDA–MEME: Accelerating motif discovery in biological sequences using CUDA-enabled graphics processing units. Pattern Recognition Letters, 31(14), 2170-2177. doi:10.1016/j.patrec.2009.10.009Pronk, S., Páll, S., Schulz, R., Larsson, P., Bjelkmar, P., Apostolov, R., … Lindahl, E. (2013). GROMACS 4.5: a high-throughput and highly parallel open source molecular simulation toolkit. Bioinformatics, 29(7), 845-854. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btt055Klus, P., Lam, S., Lyberg, D., Cheung, M., Pullan, G., McFarlane, I., … Lam, B. Y. (2012). BarraCUDA - a fast short read sequence aligner using graphics processing units. BMC Research Notes, 5(1), 27. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-5-27Kurtz, S., Phillippy, A., Delcher, A. L., Smoot, M., Shumway, M., Antonescu, C., & Salzberg, S. L. (2004). Genome Biology, 5(2), R12. doi:10.1186/gb-2004-5-2-r12Chang, C.-C., & Lin, C.-J. (2011). LIBSVM. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, 2(3), 1-27. doi:10.1145/1961189.1961199Phillips, J. 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Journal of Computational Chemistry, 26(16), 1781-1802. doi:10.1002/jcc.20289NVIDIA Popular GPU-Accelerated Applications Catalog http://www.nvidia.es/content/tesla/pdf/gpu-accelerated-applications-for-hpc.pdf 2016Walters JP Younge AJ Kang D-I GPU-passthrough performance: A comparison of KVM, Xen, VMWare ESXi, and LXC for CUDA and OpenCL applications 7th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2014) Anchorage, AK, USA 2014Yang C-T Wang H-Y Ou W-S Liu Y-T Hsu C-H On implementation of GPU virtualization using PCI pass-through 2012 IEEE 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CLOUDCOM) Taipei, Taiwan 2012 711 716Pérez F Reaño C Silla F Providing CUDA acceleration to KVM virtual machines in InfiniBand clusters with rCUDA Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems Crete, Greece 2016Jo, H., Jeong, J., Lee, M., & Choi, D. H. (2013). Exploiting GPUs in Virtual Machine for BioCloud. BioMed Research International, 2013, 1-11. doi:10.1155/2013/939460Prades J Reaño C Silla F CUDA acceleration for Xen virtual machines in Infiniband clusters with rCUDA Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming PPoPP '16 Barcelona, Spain 2016Mellanox Mellanox OFED for Linux User Manual 2015Liu, Y., Wirawan, A., & Schmidt, B. (2013). CUDASW++ 3.0: accelerating Smith-Waterman protein database search by coupling CPU and GPU SIMD instructions. BMC Bioinformatics, 14(1). doi:10.1186/1471-2105-14-117Takizawa H Sato K Komatsu K Kobayashi H CheCUDA: A checkpoint/restart tool for CUDA applications Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies Hiroshima, Japan 200

A complete and efficient CUDA-sharing solution for HPC clusters

In this paper we detail the key features, architectural design, and implementation of rCUDA, an advanced framework to enable remote and transparent GPGPU acceleration in HPC clusters. rCUDA allows decoupling GPUs from nodes, forming pools of shared accelerators, which brings enhanced flexibility to cluster configurations. This opens the door to configurations with fewer accelerators than nodes, as well as permits a single node to exploit the whole set of GPUs installed in the cluster. In our proposal, CUDA applications can seamlessly interact with any GPU in the cluster, independently of its physical location. Thus, GPUs can be either distributed among compute nodes or concentrated in dedicated GPGPU servers, depending on the cluster administrator’s policy. This proposal leads to savings not only in space but also in energy, acquisition, and maintenance costs. The performance evaluation in this paper with a series of benchmarks and a production application clearly demonstrates the viability of this proposal. Concretely, experiments with the matrix–matrix product reveal excellent performance compared with regular executions on the local GPU; on a much more complex application, the GPU-accelerated LAMMPS, we attain up to 11x speedup employing 8 remote accelerators from a single node with respect to a 12-core CPU-only execution. GPGPU service interaction in compute nodes, remote acceleration in dedicated GPGPU servers, and data transfer performance of similar GPU virtualization frameworks are also evaluated. 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) and by FEDER funds under Grant TIN2012-38341-004-01. It was also supported by MINECO, FEDER funds, under Grant TIN2011-23283, and by the Fundacion Caixa-Castello Bancaixa, Grant P11B2013-21. This work was also supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. Authors are grateful for the generous support provided by Mellanox Technologies to the rCUDA Project. The authors would also like to thank Adrian Castello, member of The rCUDA Development Team, for his hard work on rCUDA.Peña Monferrer, AJ.; Reaño González, C.; Silla Jiménez, F.; Mayo Gual, R.; Quintana-Orti, ES.; Duato Marín, JF. (2014). A complete and efficient CUDA-sharing solution for HPC clusters. Parallel Computing. 40(10):574-588. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.parco.2014.09.011S574588401

On the Virtualization of CUDA Based GPU Remoting on ARM and X86 Machines in the GVirtuS Framework

The astonishing development of diverse and different hardware platforms is twofold: on one side, the challenge for the exascale performance for big data processing and management; on the other side, the mobile and embedded devices for data collection and human machine interaction. This drove to a highly hierarchical evolution of programming models. GVirtuS is the general virtualization system developed in 2009 and firstly introduced in 2010 enabling a completely transparent layer among GPUs and VMs. This paper shows the latest achievements and developments of GVirtuS, now supporting CUDA 6.5, memory management and scheduling. Thanks to the new and improved remoting capabilities, GVirtus now enables GPU sharing among physical and virtual machines based on x86 and ARM CPUs on local workstations, computing clusters and distributed cloud appliances

Serverless Computing Strategies on Cloud Platforms

[ES] Con el desarrollo de la Computación en la Nube, la entrega de recursos virtualizados a través de Internet ha crecido enormemente en los últimos años. Las Funciones como servicio (FaaS), uno de los modelos de servicio más nuevos dentro de la Computación en la Nube, permite el desarrollo e implementación de aplicaciones basadas en eventos que cubren servicios administrados en Nubes públicas y locales. Los proveedores públicos de Computación en la Nube adoptan el modelo FaaS dentro de su catálogo para proporcionar computación basada en eventos altamente escalable para las aplicaciones. Por un lado, los desarrolladores especializados en esta tecnología se centran en crear marcos de código abierto serverless para evitar el bloqueo con los proveedores de la Nube pública. A pesar del desarrollo logrado por la informática serverless, actualmente hay campos relacionados con el procesamiento de datos y la optimización del rendimiento en la ejecución en los que no se ha explorado todo el potencial. En esta tesis doctoral se definen tres estrategias de computación serverless que permiten evidenciar los beneficios de esta tecnología para el procesamiento de datos. Las estrategias implementadas permiten el análisis de datos con la integración de dispositivos de aceleración para la ejecución eficiente de aplicaciones científicas en plataformas cloud públicas y locales. En primer lugar, se desarrolló la plataforma CloudTrail-Tracker. CloudTrail-Tracker es una plataforma serverless de código abierto basada en eventos para el procesamiento de datos que puede escalar automáticamente hacia arriba y hacia abajo, con la capacidad de escalar a cero para minimizar los costos operativos. Seguidamente, se plantea la integración de GPUs en una plataforma serverless local impulsada por eventos para el procesamiento de datos escalables. La plataforma admite la ejecución de aplicaciones como funciones severless en respuesta a la carga de un archivo en un sistema de almacenamiento de ficheros, lo que permite la ejecución en paralelo de las aplicaciones según los recursos disponibles. Este procesamiento es administrado por un cluster Kubernetes elástico que crece y decrece automáticamente según las necesidades de procesamiento. Ciertos enfoques basados en tecnologías de virtualización de GPU como rCUDA y NVIDIA-Docker se evalúan para acelerar el tiempo de ejecución de las funciones. Finalmente, se implementa otra solución basada en el modelo serverless para ejecutar la fase de inferencia de modelos de aprendizaje automático previamente entrenados, en la plataforma de Amazon Web Services y en una plataforma privada con el framework OSCAR. El sistema crece elásticamente de acuerdo con la demanda y presenta una escalado a cero para minimizar los costes. Por otra parte, el front-end proporciona al usuario una experiencia simplificada en la obtención de la predicción de modelos de aprendizaje automático. Para demostrar las funcionalidades y ventajas de las soluciones propuestas durante esta tesis se recogen varios casos de estudio que abarcan diferentes campos del conocimiento como la analítica de aprendizaje y la Inteligencia Artificial. Esto demuestra que la gama de aplicaciones donde la computación serverless puede aportar grandes beneficios es muy amplia. Los resultados obtenidos avalan el uso del modelo serverless en la simplificación del diseño de arquitecturas para el uso intensivo de datos en aplicaciones complejas.[CA] Amb el desenvolupament de la Computació en el Núvol, el lliurament de recursos virtualitzats a través d'Internet ha crescut granment en els últims anys. Les Funcions com a Servei (FaaS), un dels models de servei més nous dins de la Computació en el Núvol, permet el desenvolupament i implementació d'aplicacions basades en esdeveniments que cobreixen serveis administrats en Núvols públics i locals. Els proveïdors de computació en el Núvol públic adopten el model FaaS dins del seu catàleg per a proporcionar a les aplicacions computació altament escalable basada en esdeveniments. D'una banda, els desenvolupadors especialitzats en aquesta tecnologia se centren en crear marcs de codi obert serverless per a evitar el bloqueig amb els proveïdors del Núvol públic. Malgrat el desenvolupament alcançat per la informàtica serverless, actualment hi ha camps relacionats amb el processament de dades i l'optimització del rendiment d'execució en els quals no s'ha explorat tot el potencial. En aquesta tesi doctoral es defineixen tres estratègies informàtiques serverless que permeten demostrar els beneficis d'aquesta tecnologia per al processament de dades. Les estratègies implementades permeten l'anàlisi de dades amb a integració de dispositius accelerats per a l'execució eficient d'aplicacion scientífiques en plataformes de Núvol públiques i locals. En primer lloc, es va desenvolupar la plataforma CloudTrail-Tracker. CloudTrail-Tracker és una plataforma de codi obert basada en esdeveniments per al processament de dades serverless que pot escalar automáticament cap amunt i cap avall, amb la capacitat d'escalar a zero per a minimitzar els costos operatius. A continuació es planteja la integració de GPUs en una plataforma serverless local impulsada per esdeveniments per al processament de dades escalables. La plataforma admet l'execució d'aplicacions com funcions severless en resposta a la càrrega d'un arxiu en un sistema d'emmagatzemaments de fitxers, la qual cosa permet l'execució en paral·lel de les aplicacions segon sels recursos disponibles. Este processament és administrat per un cluster Kubernetes elàstic que creix i decreix automàticament segons les necessitats de processament. Certs enfocaments basats en tecnologies de virtualització de GPU com rCUDA i NVIDIA-Docker s'avaluen per a accelerar el temps d'execució de les funcions. Finalment s'implementa una altra solució basada en el model serverless per a executar la fase d'inferència de models d'aprenentatge automàtic prèviament entrenats en la plataforma de Amazon Web Services i en una plataforma privada amb el framework OSCAR. El sistema creix elàsticament d'acord amb la demanda i presenta una escalada a zero per a minimitzar els costos. D'altra banda el front-end proporciona a l'usuari una experiència simplificada en l'obtenció de la predicció de models d'aprenentatge automàtic. Per a demostrar les funcionalitats i avantatges de les solucions proposades durant esta tesi s'arrepleguen diversos casos d'estudi que comprenen diferents camps del coneixement com l'analítica d'aprenentatge i la Intel·ligència Artificial. Això demostra que la gamma d'aplicacions on la computació serverless pot aportar grans beneficis és molt àmplia. Els resultats obtinguts avalen l'ús del model serverless en la simplificació del disseny d'arquitectures per a l'ús intensiu de dades en aplicacions complexes.[EN] With the development of Cloud Computing, the delivery of virtualized resources over the Internet has greatly grown in recent years. Functions as a Service (FaaS), one of the newest service models within Cloud Computing, allows the development and implementation of event-based applications that cover managed services in public and on-premises Clouds. Public Cloud Computing providers adopt the FaaS model within their catalog to provide event-driven highly-scalable computing for applications. On the one hand, developers specialized in this technology focus on creating open-source serverless frameworks to avoid the lock-in with public Cloud providers. Despite the development achieved by serverless computing, there are currently fields related to data processing and execution performance optimization where the full potential has not been explored. In this doctoral thesis three serverless computing strategies are defined that allow to demonstrate the benefits of this technology for data processing. The implemented strategies allow the analysis of data with the integration of accelerated devices for the efficient execution of scientific applications on public and on-premises Cloud platforms. Firstly, the CloudTrail-Tracker platform was developed to extract and process learning analytics in the Cloud. CloudTrail-Tracker is an event-driven open-source platform for serverless data processing that can automatically scale up and down, featuring the ability to scale to zero for minimizing the operational costs. Next, the integration of GPUs in an event-driven on-premises serverless platform for scalable data processing is discussed. The platform supports the execution of applications as serverless functions in response to the loading of a file in a file storage system, which allows the parallel execution of applications according to available resources. This processing is managed by an elastic Kubernetes cluster that automatically grows and shrinks according to the processing needs. Certain approaches based on GPU virtualization technologies such as rCUDA and NVIDIA-Docker are evaluated to speed up the execution time of the functions. Finally, another solution based on the serverless model is implemented to run the inference phase of previously trained machine learning models on theAmazon Web Services platform and in a private platform with the OSCAR framework. The system grows elastically according to demand and is scaled to zero to minimize costs. On the other hand, the front-end provides the user with a simplified experience in obtaining the prediction of machine learning models. To demonstrate the functionalities and advantages of the solutions proposed during this thesis, several case studies are collected covering different fields of knowledge such as learning analytics and Artificial Intelligence. This shows the wide range of applications where serverless computing can bring great benefits. The results obtained endorse the use of the serverless model in simplifying the design of architectures for the intensive data processing in complex applications.Naranjo Delgado, DM. (2021). Serverless Computing Strategies on Cloud Platforms [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/160916TESI

On the Enhancement of Remote GPU Virtualization in High Performance Clusters

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are being adopted in many computing facilities given their extraordinary computing power, which makes it possible to accelerate many general purpose applications from different domains. However, GPUs also present several side effects, such as increased acquisition costs as well as larger space requirements. They also require more powerful energy supplies. Furthermore, GPUs still consume some amount of energy while idle and their utilization is usually low for most workloads. In a similar way to virtual machines, the use of virtual GPUs may address the aforementioned concerns. In this regard, the remote GPU virtualization mechanism allows an application being executed in a node of the cluster to transparently use the GPUs installed at other nodes. Moreover, this technique allows to share the GPUs present in the computing facility among the applications being executed in the cluster. In this way, several applications being executed in different (or the same) cluster nodes can share one or more GPUs located in other nodes of the cluster. Sharing GPUs should increase overall GPU utilization, thus reducing the negative impact of the side effects mentioned before. Reducing the total amount of GPUs installed in the cluster may also be possible. In this dissertation we enhance one framework offering remote GPU virtualization capabilities, referred to as rCUDA, for its use in high-performance clusters. While the initial prototype version of rCUDA demonstrated its functionality, it also revealed concerns with respect to usability, performance, and support for new GPU features, which prevented its used in production environments. These issues motivated this thesis, in which all the research is primarily conducted with the aim of turning rCUDA into a production-ready solution for eventually transferring it to industry. The new version of rCUDA resulting from this work presents a reduction of up to 35% in execution time of the applications analyzed with respect to the initial version. Compared to the use of local GPUs, the overhead of this new version of rCUDA is below 5% for the applications studied when using the latest high-performance computing networks available.Las unidades de procesamiento gráfico (Graphics Processing Units, GPUs) están siendo utilizadas en muchas instalaciones de computación dada su extraordinaria capacidad de cálculo, la cual hace posible acelerar muchas aplicaciones de propósito general de diferentes dominios. Sin embargo, las GPUs también presentan algunas desventajas, como el aumento de los costos de adquisición, así como mayores requerimientos de espacio. Asimismo, también requieren un suministro de energía más potente. Además, las GPUs consumen una cierta cantidad de energía aún estando inactivas, y su utilización suele ser baja para la mayoría de las cargas de trabajo. De manera similar a las máquinas virtuales, el uso de GPUs virtuales podría hacer frente a los inconvenientes mencionados. En este sentido, el mecanismo de virtualización remota de GPUs permite que una aplicación que se ejecuta en un nodo de un clúster utilice de forma transparente las GPUs instaladas en otros nodos de dicho clúster. Además, esta técnica permite compartir las GPUs presentes en el clúster entre las aplicaciones que se ejecutan en el mismo. De esta manera, varias aplicaciones que se ejecutan en diferentes nodos de clúster (o los mismos) pueden compartir una o más GPUs ubicadas en otros nodos del clúster. Compartir GPUs aumenta la utilización general de la GPU, reduciendo así el impacto negativo de las desventajas anteriormente mencionadas. De igual forma, este mecanismo también permite reducir la cantidad total de GPUs instaladas en el clúster. En esta tesis mejoramos un entorno de trabajo llamado rCUDA, el cual ofrece funcionalidades de virtualización remota de GPUs para su uso en clusters de altas prestaciones. Si bien la versión inicial del prototipo de rCUDA demostró su funcionalidad, también reveló dificultades con respecto a la usabilidad, el rendimiento y el soporte para nuevas características de las GPUs, lo cual impedía su uso en entornos de producción. Estas consideraciones motivaron la presente tesis, en la que toda la investigación llevada a cabo tiene como objetivo principal convertir rCUDA en una solución lista para su uso entornos de producción, con la finalidad de transferirla eventualmente a la industria. La nueva versión de rCUDA resultante de este trabajo presenta una reducción de hasta el 35% en el tiempo de ejecución de las aplicaciones analizadas con respecto a la versión inicial. En comparación con el uso de GPUs locales, la sobrecarga de esta nueva versión de rCUDA es inferior al 5% para las aplicaciones estudiadas cuando se utilizan las últimas redes de computación de altas prestaciones disponibles.Les unitats de processament gràfic (Graphics Processing Units, GPUs) estan sent utilitzades en moltes instal·lacions de computació donada la seva extraordinària capacitat de càlcul, la qual fa possible accelerar moltes aplicacions de propòsit general de diferents dominis. No obstant això, les GPUs també presenten alguns desavantatges, com l'augment dels costos d'adquisició, així com major requeriment d'espai. Així mateix, també requereixen un subministrament d'energia més potent. A més, les GPUs consumeixen una certa quantitat d'energia encara estant inactives, i la seua utilització sol ser baixa per a la majoria de les càrregues de treball. D'una manera semblant a les màquines virtuals, l'ús de GPUs virtuals podria fer front als inconvenients esmentats. En aquest sentit, el mecanisme de virtualització remota de GPUs permet que una aplicació que s'executa en un node d'un clúster utilitze de forma transparent les GPUs instal·lades en altres nodes d'aquest clúster. A més, aquesta tècnica permet compartir les GPUs presents al clúster entre les aplicacions que s'executen en el mateix. D'aquesta manera, diverses aplicacions que s'executen en diferents nodes de clúster (o els mateixos) poden compartir una o més GPUs ubicades en altres nodes del clúster. Compartir GPUs augmenta la utilització general de la GPU, reduint així l'impacte negatiu dels desavantatges anteriorment esmentades. A més a més, aquest mecanisme també permet reduir la quantitat total de GPUs instal·lades al clúster. En aquesta tesi millorem un entorn de treball anomenat rCUDA, el qual ofereix funcionalitats de virtualització remota de GPUs per al seu ús en clústers d'altes prestacions. Si bé la versió inicial del prototip de rCUDA va demostrar la seua funcionalitat, també va revelar dificultats pel que fa a la usabilitat, el rendiment i el suport per a noves característiques de les GPUs, la qual cosa impedia el seu ús en entorns de producció. Aquestes consideracions van motivar la present tesi, en què tota la investigació duta a terme té com a objectiu principal convertir rCUDA en una solució preparada per al seu ús entorns de producció, amb la finalitat de transferir-la eventualment a la indústria. La nova versió de rCUDA resultant d'aquest treball presenta una reducció de fins al 35% en el temps d'execució de les aplicacions analitzades respecte a la versió inicial. En comparació amb l'ús de GPUs locals, la sobrecàrrega d'aquesta nova versió de rCUDA és inferior al 5% per a les aplicacions estudiades quan s'utilitzen les últimes xarxes de computació d'altes prestacions disponibles.Reaño González, C. (2017). On the Enhancement of Remote GPU Virtualization in High Performance Clusters [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/86219TESISPremios Extraordinarios de tesis doctorale

A Performance Comparison of VMware GPU Virtualization Techniques in Cloud Gaming

Cloud gaming is an application deployment scenario which runs an interactive gaming application remotely in a cloud according to the commands received from a thin client and streams the scenes as a video sequence back to the client over the Internet, and it is of interest to both research community and industry. The academic community has developed some open-source cloud gaming systems such as GamingAnywhere for research study, while some industrial pioneers such as Onlive and Gaikai have succeeded in gaining a large user base in the cloud gaming market. Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) virtualization plays an important role in such an environment as it is a critical component that allows virtual machines to run 3D applications with performance guarantees. Currently, GPU pass-through and GPU sharing are the two main techniques of GPU virtualization. The former enables a single virtual machine to access a physical GPU directly and exclusively, while the latter makes a physical GPU shareable by multiple virtual machines. VMware Inc., one of the most popular virtualization solution vendors, has provided concrete implementations of GPU pass-through and GPU sharing. In particular, it provides a GPU pass-through solution called Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA) and a GPU-sharing solution called Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration (vSGA). Moreover, VMware Inc. recently claimed it realized another GPU sharing solution called vGPU. Nevertheless, the feasibility and performance of these solutions in cloud gaming has not been studied yet. In this work, an experimental study is conducted to evaluate the feasibility and performance of GPU pass-through and GPU sharing solutions offered by VMware in cloud gaming scenarios. The primary results confirm that vDGA and vGPU techniques can fit the demands of cloud gaming. In particular, these two solutions achieved good performance in the tested graphics card benchmarks, and gained acceptable image quality and response delay for the tested games