Title:
An Approach to Scalability Study of Shared Memory Parallel Systems

Thumbnail Image
Author(s)
Sivasubramaniam, Anand
Singla, Aman
Ramachandran, Umakishore
Venkateswaran, H.
Authors
Advisor(s)
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Associated Organization(s)
Organizational Unit
Supplementary to
Abstract
The overheads in a parallel system that limit its scalability need to be identified and separated in order to enable parallel algorithm design and the development of parallel machines. Such overheads may be broadly classified into two components. The first one is intrinsic to the algorithm and arises due to factors such as the work-imbalance and the serial fraction. The second one is due to the interaction between the algorithm and the architecture and arises due to latency and contention in the network. A top-down approach to scalability study of shared memory parallel systems is proposed in this research. We define the notion of overhead functions associated with the different algorithmic and architectural characteristics to quantify the scalability of parallel systems; we develop a method for separating the algorithmic overhead into a serial component and a work-imbalance component; we also develop a method for isolating the overheads due to network latency and contention from the overall execution time of an application; we design and implement an execution-driven simulation platform that incorporates these methods for quantifying the overhead functions; and we use this simulator to study the scalability characteristics of five applications on shared memory platforms with different communication topologies.
Sponsor
Date Issued
1993
Extent
219643 bytes
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Technical Report
Rights Statement
Rights URI