Reducing Thread Divergence in GPU-based B&B Applied to the Flow-shop problem

International audienceIn this paper,we propose a pioneering work on designing and programming B&B algorithms on GPU. To the best of our knowledge, no contribution has been proposed to raise such challenge. We focus on the parallel evaluation of the bounds for the Flow-shop scheduling problem. To deal with thread divergence caused by the bounding operation, we investigate two software based approaches called thread data reordering and branch refactoring. Experiments reported that parallel evaluation of bounds speeds up execution up to 54.5 times compared to a CPU version

Reducing thread divergence in a GPU-accelerated branch-and-bound algorithm

International audienceIn this paper, we address the design and implementation of GPU-accelerated Branch-and-Bound algorithms (B&B) for solving Flow-shop scheduling optimization problems (FSP). Such applications are CPU-time consuming and highly irregular. On the other hand, GPUs are massively multi-threaded accelerators using the SIMD model at execution. A major issue which arises when executing on GPU a B&B applied to FSP is thread or branch divergence. Such divergence is caused by the lower bound function of FSP which contains many irregular loops and conditional instructions. Our challenge is therefore to revisit the design and implementation of B&B applied to FSP dealing with thread divergence. Extensive experiments of the proposed approach have been carried out on well-known FSP benchmarks using an Nvidia Tesla C2050 GPU card. Compared to a CPU-based execution, accelerations up to ×77.46 are achieved for large problem instances

Overlay-Centric Load Balancing: Applications to UTS and B&B

International audienceTo deal with dynamic load balancing in large scale distributed systems, we propose to organize computing resources following a logical peer-to-peer overlay and to distribute the load according to the so-defined overlay. We use a tree as a logical structure connecting distributed nodes and we balance the load according to the size of induced subtrees. We conduct extensive experiments involving up to 1000 computing cores and provide a throughout analysis of different properties of our generic approach for two different applications, namely, the standard Unbalanced Tree Search and the more challenging parallel Branch-and-Bound algorithm. Substantial improvements are reported in comparison with the classical random work stealing and two finely tuned application specific strategies taken from the literature

A study of maintenance contribution to joint production and preventive maintenance scheduling problems in the robustness framework.

International audienceIn this paper, we deal with a joint production and Preventive Maintenance (PM) scheduling problem in the robustness framework. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we will establish that the insertion of maintenance activities during production scheduling can hedge against some changes in the shop environment. Furthermore, we will check if respecting the optimal intervals of maintenance activities guarantees a minimal robustness threshold. Then, we will try to identify from the used optimisation criteria those that allow making predictive schedules more robust. The computational experiments in a flowshop show that joint production and PM schedules are more robust than production schedules and maintenance provides an acceptable tradeoff between equipment reliability and performance loss under disruption

SCALABLE AND FAULT TOLERANT HIERARCHICAL B&B ALGORITHMS FOR COMPUTATIONAL GRIDS

Solving to optimality large instances of combinatorial optimization problems using Branch and Bound (B&B) algorithms requires a huge amount of computing resources. Nowadays, such power is provided by large scale environments such as computational grids. However, grids induce new challenges: scalability, heterogeneity, and fault tolerance. Most of existing gridbased B&Bs are developed using the Master-Worker paradigm, their scalability is therefore limited. Moreover fault tolerance is rarely addressed in these works. In this thesis, we propose three main contributions to deal with these issues: P2P-B&B, H-B&B, and FTH-B&B. P2PB& B is a MW-based B&B framework which deals with scalability by reducing the task request frequency and enabling direct communication between workers. H-B&B also deals with scalability. Unlike the state-of-the-art approaches, H-B&B is fully dynamic and adaptive, meaning it takes into account the dynamic acquisition of new computing resources. FTH-B&B is based on new fault tolerant mechanisms enabling efficient building of the hierarchy and maintaining its balancing, and minimizing of work redundancy when storing and recovering tasks. The proposed approaches have been implemented using ProActive grid-middleware and applied to the Flow-Shop scheduling Problem (FSP). The large scale experiments performed on Grid'5000 proved the efficiency of the proposed approaches.La résolution exacte de problèmes d'optimisation combinatoire avec les algorithmes Branch and Bound (B&B) nécessite un nombre exorbitant de ressources de calcul. Actuellement, cette puissance est offerte par les environnements large échelle comme les grilles de calcul. Cependant, les grilles présentent de nouveaux challenges : le passage à l'échelle, l'hétérogénéité et la tolérance aux pannes. La majorité des algorithmes B&B revisités pour les grilles de calcul sont basés sur le paradigme Master-Worker, ce qui limite leur passage à l'échelle. De plus, la tolérance aux pannes est rarement adressée dans ces travaux. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons trois principales contributions : P2P-B&B, H-B&B et FTH-B&B. P2P-B&B est un famework basé sur le paradigme Master-Worker traite le passage à l'échelle par la réduction de la fréquence de requêtes de tâches et en permettant les communications directes entre les workers. H-B&B traite aussi le passage à l'échelle. Contrairement aux approches proposées dans la littérature, H-B&B est complètement dynamique et adaptatif i.e. prenant en compte l'acquisition dynamique des ressources de calcul. FTH-B&B est basé sur de nouveaux méchanismes de tolérance aux pannes permettant de construire et maintenir la hiérarchie équilibrée, et de minimiser la redondance de travail quand les tâches sont sauvegardées et restaurées. Les approches proposées ont été implémentées avec la plateforme pour grille ProActive et ont été appliquées au problème d'ordonnancement de type Flow-Shop. Les expérimentations large échelle effectuées sur la grille Grid'5000 ont prouvé l'éfficacité des approches proposées

Hierarchical branch and bound algorithm for computational Grids

International audienceBranch and Bound (B&B) algorithms are efficiently used for exact resolution of combinatorial optimization problems (COPs). They are easy to parallelize using the Master/Worker paradigm (MW) but limited in scalability when solving large instances of COPs on large scale environments such as computational grids. Indeed, the master process rapidly becomes a bottleneck. In this paper, we propose a new approach H-B&B for parallel B&B based on a hierarchical MW paradigm in order to deal with the scalability issue of the traditional MW-based B&B. The hierarchy is built dynamically and evolves over time according to the dynamic acquisition of computing nodes. The inner nodes of the hierarchy (masters) perform branching operations to generate sub-trees and the leaves (workers) perform a complete exploration of these sub-trees. Therefore, in addition to the parallel exploration of sub-trees, a parallel branching is adopted. H-B&B is applied to the Flow-Shop scheduling problem. Unlike most existing grid-based B&B algorithms, H-B&B has been experimented on a real computational grid (Grid’5000). The results demonstrate the scalability and efficiency of H-B&B

FTH-B&B: A Fault-Tolerant HierarchicalBranch and Bound for Large ScaleUnreliable Environments

International audienceSolving to optimality large instances of combinatorial optimization problems using Brand and Bound (B&B) algorithms requires a huge amount of computing resources. In this paper, we investigate the design and implementation of such algorithms on computational grids. Most of existing grid-based B&B algorithms are based on the Master-Worker paradigm, their scalability is therefore limited. In addition, even if the volatility of resources is a major issue in grids fault tolerance is rarely addressed in these works. We thereby propose FTH-B&B, a fault tolerant hierarchical B&B. FTH-B&B is based on different new mechanisms enabling to efficiently build and maintain balanced the hierarchy, and to store and recover work units (sub-problems). FTH-B&B has been implemented on top of the ProActive grid middleware and programming environment and applied to the Flow-Shop scheduling problem. Very often, the validation of existing grid-based B&B works is performed either through simulation or a very small real grid. In this paper, we experimented FTH-B&B on the Grid’5000 real French nation-wide computational grid using up to 1,900 processor cores distributed over six sites. The reported results show that the overhead induced by the proposed mechanisms is very low and an efficiency close to 100 percent can be achieved on some Taillards benchmarks of the Flow-Shop problem. In addition, the results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed mechanisms even in extreme failure situations

Fault-tolerant mechanism for hierarchical branch and bound algorithm

International audienc