Exploring and Evaluating Array Layout Restructuration for SIMDization

International audienceSIMD processor units have become ubiquitous. Using SIMD instructions is the key for performance for many applications. Modern compilers have made immense progress in generating efficient SIMD code. However, they still may fail or SIMDize poorly, due to conservativeness, source complexity or missing capabilities. When SIMDization fails, programmers are left with little clues about the root causes and actions to be taken. Our proposed guided SIMDization framework builds on the assembly-code quality assessment toolkit MAQAO to analyzes binaries for possible SIMDization hindrances. It proposes improvement strategies and readily quantifies their impact, using in vivo evaluations of suggested transformation. Thanks to our framework, the programmer gets clear directions and quantified expectations on how to improve his/her code SIMDizability. We show results of our technique on TSVC benchmark.Les unités de calcul vectorielles sont désormais omniprésentes dans les processeurs. L'utilisation des jeux d'instructions vectoriels est un facteur clé dans la recherche de performances pour de nombreuses applications. Les compilateurs modernes ont fait d'immenses progrès dans la génération d'un code vectorisé efficace. Cependant, ils peuvent encore échouer ou générer un code vectorisé de mauvaise qualité dans certains cas, du fait d'un conservatisme trop important, de la complexité du code source ou de capacités insuffisantes. Lorsque la vectorisation échoue, les programmeurs n'obtiennent que peu d'indices sur les causes réelles et les actions correctives à entreprendre. Notre proposition d'environnement de vectorisation guidée se base sur notre outil MAQAO de contrôle qualitatif de code assembleur pour analyser les binaires produits et rechercher les causes possibles empêchant la vectorisation. Cet environnement propose des stratégies d'amélioration du code et permet d'en vérifier immédiatement leur impact en termes de performances, à l'aide d'évaluations in-vivo des transformations suggérées. Grâce à notre environnement, le programmeur obtiens des orientations claires sur la manière d'améliorer son code et une estimation quantifiée du gain espéré de telles transformations. Nous présentons les résultat de notre outil sur la suite de tests TSVC

Detecting SIMDization Opportunities through Static/Dynamic Dependence Analysis

International audienceUsing SIMD instructions is essential in modern processor architecture for high performance computing. Compilers automatic vectorization shows limited efficiency in general, due to conservative dependence analysis, complex control flow or indexing. This paper presents a technique to detect SIMDization opportunities, complementing in a more detailed way compiler optimization reports. The method is based on static and dynamic dependence analysis, able to analyze codes not vectorized by a compiler. This method generates user-hints to help vectorize applications. We show on TSVC benchmark the benefits of this approach.L'utilisation des instructions SIMD est essentielle pour obtenir de bonnes performances de calcul sur les processeurs d'architecture moderne. La vectorisation automatique proposée par les compilateurs s'avère d'efficacité limitée en général, du fait d'une analyse de dépendances conservatrice, de flots de contrôle ou d'indices complexes. Cet article présente une technique de détection des opportunités de SIMDisation, complétant de façon plus détaillée les rapports d'optimisation des compilateurs. Cette méthode est basée sur l'analyse statique et dynamique conjointe des dépendances. Elle est capable d'analyser des codes non vectorisés par un compilateur. Cette méthode génère des suggestions à destination de l'utilisateur, afin de l'aider à vectoriser des applications. Nous montrons les bénéfices de cette approche sur le benchmark TSVC

A Middleware Supporting Data Movement in Complex and Software-Defined Storage and Memory Architectures

International audienceAmong the broad variety of challenges that arise from workloads in a converged HPC and Cloud infrastructure, data movement is of paramount importance, especially oncoming exascale systems featuring multiple tiers of memory and storage. While the focus has, for years, been primarily on optimizing computations, the importance of improving data handling on such architectures is now well understood. As optimization techniques can be applied at different stages (operating system, run-time system, programming environment, and so on), a middleware providing a uniform and consistent data awareness becomes necessary. In this paper, we introduce a novel memory-and data-aware middleware called Maestro, designed for data orchestration

Is computational oceanography coming of age?

Computational oceanography is the study of ocean phenomena by numerical simulation, especially dynamical and physical phenomena. Progress in information technology has driven exponential growth in the number of global ocean observations and the fidelity of numerical simulations of the ocean in the past few decades. The growth has been exponentially faster for ocean simulations, however. We argue that this faster growth is shifting the importance of field measurements and numerical simulations for oceanographic research. It is leading to the maturation of computational oceanography as a branch of marine science on par with observational oceanography. One implication is that ultraresolved ocean simulations are only loosely constrained by observations. Another implication is that barriers to analyzing the output of such simulations should be removed. Although some specific limits and challenges exist, many opportunities are identified for the future of computational oceanography. Most important is the prospect of hybrid computational and observational approaches to advance understanding of the ocean

Comparative Phylogeography of a Coevolved Community: Concerted Population Expansions in Joshua Trees and Four Yucca Moths

Comparative phylogeographic studies have had mixed success in identifying common phylogeographic patterns among co-distributed organisms. Whereas some have found broadly similar patterns across a diverse array of taxa, others have found that the histories of different species are more idiosyncratic than congruent. The variation in the results of comparative phylogeographic studies could indicate that the extent to which sympatrically-distributed organisms share common biogeographic histories varies depending on the strength and specificity of ecological interactions between them. To test this hypothesis, we examined demographic and phylogeographic patterns in a highly specialized, coevolved community – Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) and their associated yucca moths. This tightly-integrated, mutually interdependent community is known to have experienced significant range changes at the end of the last glacial period, so there is a strong a priori expectation that these organisms will show common signatures of demographic and distributional changes over time. Using a database of >5000 GPS records for Joshua trees, and multi-locus DNA sequence data from the Joshua tree and four species of yucca moth, we combined paleaodistribution modeling with coalescent-based analyses of demographic and phylgeographic history. We extensively evaluated the power of our methods to infer past population size and distributional changes by evaluating the effect of different inference procedures on our results, comparing our palaeodistribution models to Pleistocene-aged packrat midden records, and simulating DNA sequence data under a variety of alternative demographic histories. Together the results indicate that these organisms have shared a common history of population expansion, and that these expansions were broadly coincident in time. However, contrary to our expectations, none of our analyses indicated significant range or population size reductions at the end of the last glacial period, and the inferred demographic changes substantially predate Holocene climate changes

Kernel optimization by layout restructuring

Careful data layout design is crucial for achieving high performance, as nowadays processors waste a considerable amount of time being stalled by memory transactions, and in particular spacial and temporal locality have to be optimized. However, data layout transformations is an area left largely unexplored by state-of-the-art compilers, due to the difficulty to evaluate the possible performance gains of transformations. Moreover, optimizing data layout is time-consuming, error-prone, and layout transformations are too numerous tobe experimented by hand in hope to discover a high performance version. We propose to guide application programmers through data layout restructuring with an extensive feedback, firstly by providing a comprehensive multidimensional description of the initial layout, built via analysis of memory traces collected from the application binary textit {in fine} aiming at pinpointing problematic strides at the instruction level, independently of theinput language. We choose to focus on layout transformations,translatable to C-formalism to aid user understanding, that we apply and assesson case study composed of two representative multithreaded real-lifeapplications, a cardiac wave simulation and lattice QCD simulation, with different inputs and parameters. The performance prediction of different transformations matches (within 5%) with hand-optimized layout code.Bien penser la structuration de données est primordial pour obtenir de hautes performances, alors que les processeurs actuels perdent un temps considérable à attendre la complétion de transactions mémoires. En particulier les localités spatiales et temporelles de données doivent être optimisées.Cependant, les transformations de structures de données ne sont pas proprement explorées par les compilateurs, en raison de la difficulté que pose l'évaluation de performance des transformations potentielles. De plus,l'optimisation des structures de données est chronophage, sujette à erreur etles transformations à considérer sont trop nombreuses pour être implémentées à la main dans l'optique de trouver une version de code efficace.On propose de guider les programmeurs à travers le processus de restructuration de données grace à un retour utilisateur approfondi, tout d'abord en donnant une description multidimensionnelle de la structure de donnée initiale, faite par une analyse de traces mémoire issues du binaire de l'application de l'utilisateur, dans le but de localiser des problèmes de stride au niveau instruction, indépendemment du langage d'entrée. On choisit de focaliser notre étude sur les transformations de structure de données, traduisibles dans un formalisme proche du C pour favoriser la compréhension de l'utilisateur, que l'on applique et évalue sur deux cas d'étude qui sont des applications réelles,à savoir une simulation d'ondes cardiaques et une simulation de chromodynamique quantique sur réseau, avec différents jeux d'entrées. La prédiction de performance de différentes transformations est conforme à 5% près aux versions réécrites à la main

Estimation d'efficacité et restructuration automatisées de noyaux de calcul

Bien penser la structuration de données est primordial pour obtenir de hautes performances, alors que les processeurs actuels perdent un temps considérable à attendre la complétion de transactions mémoires. En particulier les localités spatiales et temporelles de données doivent être optimisées.Cependant, les transformations de structures de données ne sont pas proprement explorées par les compilateurs, en raison de la difficulté que pose l'évaluation de performance des transformations potentielles. De plus,l'optimisation des structures de données est chronophage, sujette à erreur etles transformations à considérer sont trop nombreuses pour être implémentées à la main dans l'optique de trouver une version de code efficace.On propose de guider les programmeurs à travers le processus de restructuration de données grace à un retour utilisateur approfondi, tout d'abord en donnant une description multidimensionnelle de la structure de donnée initiale, faite par une analyse de traces mémoire issues du binaire de l'application de l'utilisateur, dans le but de localiser des problèmes de stride au niveau instruction, indépendemment du langage d'entrée. On choisit de focaliser notre étude sur les transformations de structure de données, traduisibles dans un formalisme proche du C pour favoriser la compréhension de l'utilisateur, que l'on applique et évalue sur deux cas d'étude qui sont des applications réelles,à savoir une simulation d'ondes cardiaques et une simulation de chromodynamique quantique sur réseau, avec différents jeux d'entrées. La prédiction de performance de différentes transformations est conforme à 5% près aux versions réécrites à la main.Careful data layout design is crucial for achieving high performance, as nowadays processors waste a considerable amount of time being stalled by memory transactions, and in particular spacial and temporal locality have to be optimized. However, data layout transformations is an area left largely unexplored by state-of-the-art compilers, due to the difficulty to evaluate the possible performance gains of transformations. Moreover, optimizing data layout is time-consuming, error-prone, and layout transformations are too numerous tobe experimented by hand in hope to discover a high performance version. We propose to guide application programmers through data layout restructuring with an extensive feedback, firstly by providing a comprehensive multidimensional description of the initial layout, built via analysis of memory traces collected from the application binary textit {in fine} aiming at pinpointing problematic strides at the instruction level, independently of theinput language. We choose to focus on layout transformations,translatable to C-formalism to aid user understanding, that we apply and assesson case study composed of two representative multithreaded real-lifeapplications, a cardiac wave simulation and lattice QCD simulation, with different inputs and parameters. The performance prediction of different transformations matches (within 5%) with hand-optimized layout code

A Middleware Supporting Data Movement in Complex and Software-Defined Storage and Memory Architectures

International audienceAmong the broad variety of challenges that arise from workloads in a converged HPC and Cloud infrastructure, data movement is of paramount importance, especially oncoming exascale systems featuring multiple tiers of memory and storage. While the focus has, for years, been primarily on optimizing computations, the importance of improving data handling on such architectures is now well understood. As optimization techniques can be applied at different stages (operating system, run-time system, programming environment, and so on), a middleware providing a uniform and consistent data awareness becomes necessary. In this paper, we introduce a novel memory-and data-aware middleware called Maestro, designed for data orchestration