1 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
5 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
8 % declaration of the new block
9 \algblock{ParFor}{EndParFor}
10 % customising the new block
11 \algnewcommand\algorithmicparfor{\textbf{parfor}}
12 \algnewcommand\algorithmicpardo{\textbf{do}}
13 \algnewcommand\algorithmicendparfor{\textbf{end\ parfor}}
14 \algrenewtext{ParFor}[1]{\algorithmicparfor\ #1\ \algorithmicpardo}
15 \algrenewtext{EndParFor}{\algorithmicendparfor}
16 \chapter{Parallel Architectures and Iterative Applications}
19 %\lettrine[lines=2]{A}{u}
21 \section{Introduction}
24 Most of the software applications are structured as sequential programs.
25 The structure of the program code is a series of instructions that
26 are executed successively one after the other. For many years until a short time,
27 with each new generation of microprocessors, users of sequential applications expected that these applications should run faster over them than over the previous ones.
28 Nowadays, this idea is no longer valid since recent releases of microprocessors have many computing units that are embedded in one chip and programs are running only over one computing unit sequentially.
29 Indeed, new applications have significantly improved their performance over new architectures in parallel compared to traditional applications.
30 To improve the performance of applications, they should be parallelized and executed simultaneously over all available computing units.
31 Moreover, parallel applications should be optimized to the parallel hardwares that will execute them.
32 Therefore, parallel applications and parallel architectures are closely tied together.
33 For example, the energy consumption of one parallel system mainly depends on both: (1) parallel applications and (2) parallel architectures. Indeed, an energy consumption model or any measurement system depends on many specifications, some of them are related to the parallel hardware features such as: (1) the frequency of processor, (2) the power consumption of processor and (3) the communication model. Others rely to the parallel application such as: (1) the computation time and (2) the communication time of the application.
36 This work of this thesis is focused on studying the iterative parallel applications, where different parallel architectures
37 are used to execute them in parallel, while optimizing their energy consumptions.
38 In this context, this chapter gives a brief overview about parallel hardware architectures and parallel iterative applications. Also, it discusses an energy model proposed by other authors used to measure the energy consumption of these applications.
39 The reminder of this chapter is organized as follows: section \ref{ch1:2} describes different types of parallelism and different types of parallel platforms. It also explains some models of parallel programming. Section \ref{ch1:3} discusses both types of parallel iterative methods, synchronous and asynchronous ones and comparing them. Section \ref{ch1:4}, presents a well accepted energy model from the state of the art that can be used to measure the energy consumption of parallel iterative applications when the frequency of processor is changed. Finally, section \ref{ch1:5} summarizes this chapter.
42 \section{Parallel Computing Architectures}
44 The process of executing the calculations simultaneously over many computing units is called parallel computing.
45 Its main principle refers to the ability of dividing a large problem into smaller sub-problems that can be solved at the same time \cite{ref2}.
46 Solving the sub-problems of one main problem in parallel is carried out in parallel on multiple processors.
47 Indeed, a parallel architecture can be defined as a computing system that is composed of many processing elements, which are connected via a network model and some tools that are used to make the processing units work together \cite{ref1}.
48 In other words, the parallel computing architecture consists of software and hardware resources.
49 Hardware resources are: (1) the processing units, (2) the memory model and (3) the network system that connects them. Software resources include (1) the specific operating system, (2) the programming language and (3) the compile or the runtime libraries. Besides, parallel computing may have different levels of parallelism that can be performed in a software or a hardware level. Five types of parallelism levels have been defined as follows:
52 \item \textbf{Bit-level parallelism (BLP)}: The appearance of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) in 1970s has been viewed as the first step towards parallel computing. It is used to increase the number of bits in the word size which is processed by a processor as illustrated in the figure~\ref{fig:ch1:1}. For many successive years, the number of bits have been increased starting from 4 bit to 64 bit microprocessors. For example nowadays, the recent x86-64 architecture is the most common architecture. For a given application, the biggest the word size is the lesser instructions to be executed by the processor.
56 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/bits-para.pdf}
57 \caption{Bit-level parallelism }
61 \item \textbf{Data-level parallelism (DLP)}: Data parallelism is the process of distributing data vector between processors, where each one performs the same operations on its data sub-vector. Therefore, many arithmetic operations can be performed on the same data vector in a simultaneous manner. This type of parallelism can be used in many programs, especially in the area of scientific computing. Usually, data-parallel operations are only provided to arrays operations, for example, as shown in figure \ref{fig:ch1:2}. Vector multiplication, image and signal processing can be considered as an example of applications that use this type of parallelism.
65 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/data-para.pdf}
66 \caption{Data-level parallelism }
71 \item \textbf{Instruction-level parallelism (ILP)}: Generally, a sequential program is composed of many instructions. These instructions can be executed in parallel at the same time, if each one of them is independent from the others. In particular, the parallelism can be achieved in instruction level by using a pipeline. It means the input and output times of each instruction is overlapped by computations from other instructions. For example, if we have two instructions: $I_1$ and $I_2$, they are independent if there is no control and no data dependency between them.
72 In pipeline stages, the execution of each instruction is divided into multiple steps. Then, they can be overlapped with the steps of other instructions by a pipeline hardware unit.
73 Figure~\ref{fig:ch1:3} demonstrates four instructions, where each one has four steps denoted as: (1) fetch, (2) decode, (3) execute and (4) write. Thus, they are implemented in hardware units by pipeline.
77 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/pipelines.pdf}
78 \caption{Instruction-level parallelism by pipelines}
84 \item \textbf{Thread-level parallelism (TLP)}: It is also known as task-level parallelism.
85 According to Moore’s law \cite{ref9}, the number of transistors in a processor doubles each two years to increase its performance. Cache and main memory sizes must also be increased in order to avoid data bottlenecks.
86 However, increasing the number of transistors may generate some issues: (1) the first issue is related to drastically increase in cache size, which leads to a large access time. (2) the second issue is related to the huge increase in the number of the transistors per CPU, which can increase significantly the heat dissipation.
87 Thus, CPUs constructors couldn't increase the frequency of the processor anymore due to these reasons. Therefore, they created multi-core processors. With multi-core processors, programmers subdivide their programs into multiple tasks which can be then executed in parallel over them to improve the performance, see figure~\ref{fig:ch1:4}. Each processor can have individual threads or multiple threads dedicated to each task. A thread can be defined as a part of the parallel program that shares processor resources with other threads.
91 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/thread-para.pdf}
92 \caption{Thread-level parallelism}
96 Therefore, the execution time of a sequential program that is composed of $N$ tasks, is the sum of the execution times of all tasks. Thus, it is expressed as follows:
100 Sequential~execution~time = \sum_{i=1}^{N} T_i
103 Whereas, if tasks are executed synchronously over multiple processing units in parallel, the execution time of the program is defined as the execution time of the task that has maximum the execution time (the slowest task) as follows:
107 Parallel~execution~time = \max_{i=1,\dots,N} T_i
110 \item \textbf{Loop-level parallelism (LLP)}:
111 Many algorithms execute iteratively the same program portion, computations, many times using different forms of loop statements. At each iteration, the program needs to scan a large data structure such as an array structure to perform the arithmetic calculations. Inside the loop structure, there are many instructions that are dependent or independent. In a sequential loop execution, the $i$ iteration must be executed after the completion of the $(i-1)$ iteration.
112 If each iteration is independent from the others, then all iterations' instructions can be distributed over many processors to be executed in parallel,
113 for example, see figure\ref{fig:ch1:5}. In the parallel programming languages, this type of loop is called the $parallel~loop$.
117 \includegraphics[scale=0.85]{fig/ch1/loop-para.pdf}
118 \caption{Loop-level parallelism}
122 The execution time of the parallel loop portion can be computed as
123 the execution time of a sequential loop portion has $N_{iter}$ iterations divided by the number of the processing units $N_{processors}$ as follows:
127 Parallel~loop~time = \frac{Sequential~loop~time}{N_{processors}}
128 =\frac{\sum_{i=1}^{N_{iter}} Time~of~iter_i}
132 For more details about the levels of parallelism see \cite{ref3,ref4,ref6,ref7}.
135 \subsection{Types of Parallel platforms}
137 The main goal behind using a parallel architecture is to solve a big problem faster.
138 A collection of processing elements must work together to compute the final solution of the main problem. Many different architectures have been proposed
139 and classified according to parallelism in instruction and data
140 streams. In 1966, Michel Flynn has proposed a simple model to categorize all computers models that is still useful until now \cite{ref10}. His taxonomy is based on considering the data and the operations performed on this data to classify the computing systems into four types as follows:
144 \item \textbf{Single instruction, single data (SISD) stream}: A single processor that executes a single instruction stream (i.e executing one data stream stored in an individual memory model, see figure \ref{fig:ch1:6}).
145 The conventional sequential computer, according to Von Neumann model \cite{ref50}, also called the Uniprocessors can be viewed as an example of this type of architecture.
148 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/sisd.pdf}
149 \caption{SISD machine architecture}
153 \item \textbf{Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) stream}: All processors execute the same instructions on different data.
154 Each processor stores the data in its local memory. Then, they communicate with each others typically via a simple communication model, see figure \ref{fig:ch1:7}. Many scientific and engineering
155 applications are referred to this type of parallel scheme.
156 Vector and array processors are well known examples of this type.
157 Examples about the applications executed over this architecture: (1) graphics processing, (2) video compression and (3) medical image analysis applications.
161 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/simd.pdf}
162 \caption{SIMD machine architecture}
166 \item \textbf{Multiple instruction, single data (MISD) stream}: Many operations from multiple processing elements are executed over the same data stream. Each processing element has its local memory to store the private program instructions. Then, these instructions are applied to unique global memory data stream as in figure \ref{fig:ch1:8}. While the MISD machine is not commonly used, there are some interesting uses such as the systolic arrays and dataflow machines.
170 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/misd.pdf}
171 \caption{MISD machine architecture}
176 \item \textbf{Multiple instruction, Multiple data (MIMD) stream}: There are multiple processing elements, each one has a separate instruction and local data memories.
177 At any time, different processing elements may be used to execute different instructions on different data fragment, see figure \ref{fig:ch1:9}. There are two types of MIMD machines: the shared memory and the message passing MIMD machines.
178 In the former, processors communicate via a shared memory model, while in the latter, each processor has its own local memory and all processors communicate with each others via a communication network model. The multi-core processors, local clusters and grid systems are some examples for MIMD machine.
179 Many applications have been developed based on this architecture
180 such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, simulation, modeling, iterative applications and so on.
184 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/mimd.pdf}
185 \caption{MIMD machine architecture}
189 For more details about this architectural taxonomy see \cite{ref11,ref5,ref13,ref14}.
191 The work of this thesis is dedicated to MIMD machine's architecture. Therefore, we discuss in
192 this chapter some of the commonly used parallel architectures that belong to MIMD machines.
193 As explained before, MIMD architectures can be classified into two types, the shared memory and the distributed message passing ones. Furthermore, these classifications are based on
194 how MIMD processors access the memory model. The shared MIMD machine communication topology can be bus-based, extended or hierarchical type. Whereas, the distributed memory MIMD machine may have hypercube or mesh interconnected networks. In the following some well known MIMD parallel computing platforms are explained:
197 \item \textbf{Multi-core processors}:
198 The multi-core processor is a single chip component with two or more processing units. These processing units are called cores, which are connected to each other via a main memory model as in the figure \ref{fig:ch1:10}. Each individual core has its own cache memory to store data. Moreover, each core may have one or more threads to execute a specific programming task as shown in the thread-level parallelism. Historically, the multi-cores of the CPU began as two-core processors, then the number of cores doubled with each semiconductor process generation \cite{ref12}. The graphic processing units (GPU) use extensively the multi-core architecture,
199 the NVIDIA GeForce TITAN Z has 5700 cores in the year of 2015 \cite{ref17}. While, in the same year a general-purpose microprocessor (CPU) has a lot less cores, for example the TILE-MX processor from Tilera has 100 cores \cite{ref16}. For more details about the multi-core processors see \cite{ref15}.
203 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/multicores.pdf}
204 \caption{Multi-core processor architecture}
209 \item \textbf{Local Cluster}:
210 is a collection of independent computers that are connected
211 to each other via a high speed
212 local area network (LAN) with low latency and big bandwidth. Moreover, each node communicates with other nodes using messages. All the nodes in the cluster must be controlled by one node called the master node, which is a specific node used to handle the scheduling and the management of the other nodes as shown in the figure \ref{fig:ch1:11}. Usually, all the nodes are homogeneous, they have the same specifications in term of computing power and memory. Also, all the computing nodes in the cluster run the same operating system. See \cite{ref18, ref19} for more information about the cluster and its applications.
216 \includegraphics[scale=1]{fig/ch1/cluster.pdf}
217 \caption{Local cluster architecture}
222 \item \textbf{Grid (Distributed clusters)}:
223 Grid is a collection of computing clusters from different sites that are connected via a wide area network (WAN).
224 In particular, different local clusters compose the grid are geographically located far away from each others. Usually, each cluster is composed of homogeneous nodes, which are different from nodes of the other clusters located in different sites. These nodes can be different in their hardware and software specifications (i.e their computing power, their memory size, their operating system and their network: latency and bandwidth). Figure \ref{fig:ch1:12} presents an example of a grid that is composed of three heterogeneous clusters that are located in different sites and connected via a wide area network. Furthermore, the grid can refer to an infrastructure that applies the integration and the collaboration by using a collection of different computers, networks, database servers and scientific devices, which belong to many companies and universities. Therefore, wide heterogeneous computing resources are available to be used simultaneously by different users. Note that, the main bottleneck of the grid is the high latency communications between the nodes from different sites.
225 See \cite{ref20} for more information about the grid and its applications.
229 \includegraphics[scale=0.85]{fig/ch1/grid.pdf}
230 \caption{Grid architecture}
237 \subsection{Parallel programming Models}
239 Many parallel programming languages and libraries have been developed
240 to explore the computing power of the parallel architectures. In this section,
241 two types of parallel programming languages are investigated: (1) shared and (2) distributed programming models. Moreover, each type is divided into two subcategories according to their supporting level for the number of computing units from which the parallel platform is composed.
242 Figure \ref{fig:ch1:14} presents this classification hierarchy of the parallel programming
247 \includegraphics[scale=0.75]{fig/ch1/classification.pdf}
248 \caption{The classification of the parallel Programming Models}
253 Many programming interfaces and libraries have been developed to compile and run the
254 parallel applications over the parallel architectures. In the following,
255 some examples for each type of the parallel programming models are discussed:
258 \item \textbf{Local cluster programming models}
260 \item \textbf{MPI} \cite{ref23} is the Message Passing Interface and it is considered as a
262 dedicated to message passing in a distributed memory environment.
263 The first version of MPI was designed by a group of researchers in
264 1991. It is a specification and have been implemented in many programming
265 languages such as C, Fortran and
267 The MPI functions are not only limited to point to point operations for
268 sending and receiving messages, there are many others collective
269 operations such as gathering and reduction operations.
270 While MPI is not designed for grid,
271 it is widely used as the communication interface for grid applications
273 In this work, MPI was used in programming our algorithms and applications which are
274 implemented in both Fortran and C programming languages.
281 \item \textbf{Multi-core CPU programming models}
283 \item \textbf{OpenMP} \cite{ref34} is a parallel programming tool dedicated to shared memory
284 architectures. The main goal of using this programming model is to provide
285 a standard and portable API (application programming interface) to write
286 shared memory parallel programs. It can be used with many programming languages such
287 as C, C++ and Fortran in order to support different types of shared memory platforms
288 such as multi-core processors.
289 OpenMP uses multi-threading, which is a model in parallel programming
290 that uses a master thread to control a set of slave threads. Each
291 thread can be executed in parallel by assigning it to a processor.
292 Moreover, OpenMP can be used with MPI to support hybrid platforms which have
293 shared and distributed memory models at the same time.
299 \item \textbf{GPU programming models}
301 \item \textbf{CUDA} \cite{ref37} Modern graphical processing units (GPUs) have increased its chip-level
302 parallelism. Current NVIDIA GPUs consist of many-cores processors that have
303 thousands of cores. To make their GPUs a general purpose computing processor in 2007
304 the NVIDIA has developed CUDA a parallel programming language.
305 A CUDA program has two parts: host and kernels. The host code is sequentially
306 executed over the CPU.
307 While, the kernels are executed in parallel over the GPUs.
309 \item \textbf{OpenCL}\cite{ref38} is for Open Computing Language. It is a parallel
310 programming language dedicated for heterogeneous platforms composed
311 of CPUs and GPUs. The first release of this language has initially been developed
312 by Apple in 2008. Functions that are executed over OpenCL devices are called kernels.
313 They are portable and can be executed on any computing hardware such as CPU or GPU
324 \section{Iterative Methods}
326 In this work, we are interested in solving linear equations which are well known in the scientific area.
327 It is generally expressed in the following form:
334 Where $A$ is a two dimensional matrix of size $N \times N$, $x$ is the unknown vector,
335 and $b$ is a vector of constant, each of size $N$. There are two types of solution methods to solve this linear system.
336 The first type of methods is called \textbf{Direct methods}, which consist of a finite number of steps depending on the
337 size of the linear system to give the exact solution. If the problem size is very big, these methods are expensive or their
338 solutions are impossible in some cases. The second type is called \textbf{Iterative methods}, which computes
339 the same block of operations several times, starting from the initial vector until reaching the acceptable
340 approximation of the exact solution. However, they can be effectively applied in parallel. Moreover, iterative methods can be used to solve both linear and non-linear equations.
342 The sequential iterative algorithm is typically organized as a series of steps essentially of the form:
346 X^{(k+1)} \longleftarrow F(X^k)
349 Where $F$ is one or set of operations applied to the data vector $X^k$ to produce the new data vector $X^{(k+1)}$. The operation $F$ is applied sequentially many times until satisfying the convergence condition as in the algorithm \ref{sia}.
353 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
354 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
356 \State Initialize the vector $X^0$ randomly
357 \For {$k:=1$ to \textit{convergence}}
359 \State $X^{(k+1)} = F(X^k)$
362 \caption{The iterative sequential algorithm}
367 The sequential iterative algorithm at each iteration computes the value of the relative error, which is called the residual and denoted as $R$. This error value can be computed as the maximum difference between the data components of the vectors of the last two successive iterations as follows:
371 R = \max_{i=1, \dots, N} \abs{X_i^{(k+1)} - X_i^k}
373 Where $N$ is the size of the vector $X$. Then, the iterative sequential algorithm stops iterating if the maximum error between the last two successive solution vectors, as in \ref{eq:res}, is less than or equal to a threshold value. Otherwise, it replaces the new vector $X^{(k+1)}$ with the old vector $X^k$ and computes a new iteration.
375 \subsection{Synchronous Parallel Iterative method}
377 The sequential iterative algorithm \ref{sia} can be parallelized by executing it on many computing units. To solve this algorithm on $M$ computing units, first the elements of the problem vector $X$ must be subdivided into $M$ sub-vectors, $X^k=(X_1^k,\dots,X_M^k)$.
378 Each sub-vector can be solved independently on one computing unit as follows:
382 X_i^{k+1}= F_i(X_1^k,\dots,X_M^k) \hspace{1cm} where \hspace{0.2cm} i=1,\dots, M
385 Where $X_i^k$ is the sub-vector executed over the $i^{th}$ computing unit at the iteration $k$.
387 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
388 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
390 \State Initialize the sub-vectors $(X_1^0,\dots,X_M^0)$
391 \For {$k:=1$ step $1$ to \textit{convergence}}
392 \ParFor {$i:=1$ to \textit{M}}
393 \State $X^{(k+1)} = F(X^k)$
399 \caption{The synchronous parallel iterative algorithm}
404 The algorithm \ref{spia} represents the synchronous parallel iterative algorithm. Similarly to
405 the sequential iterative algorithm \ref{spia}, this algorithm stops iterating when the convergence condition is satisfied.
406 We consider that the keyword \textbf{parfor} is used to make a for loop in parallel.
408 This algorithm needs to satisfy a convergence condition which is called the global convergence condition. In order to detect the global convergence overall computing units, first we need to compute
409 at each iteration the local residual. Then at the end of each iteration, all the local residuals from $M$ computing units must be reduced to one maximum value represented by the global residual.
410 For example, in MPI this operation is directly applied using a high level communication procedure called \textit{AllReduce}. The goal of this communication procedure is to apply the reduction operation on all local residuals computed by the computing units.
415 \includegraphics[scale=0.75]{fig/ch1/sisc.pdf}
416 \caption{The SISC Model}
421 In a synchronous parallel iterative algorithm, computing processors need to communicate with each others to
422 exchange data at each iteration if there is a dependency between the parallel tasks. Algorithm \ref{spia} use synchronous iterations and synchronous communications denoted as \textbf{SISC} model. At each iteration, the computing processor waits until
423 it receives all the computed data at the previous iteration from other processors to perform the next iteration. Figure \ref{fig:ch1:15}, shows that using SISC model in a heterogeneous platform may result in big periods of the idle times represented by the white dashed spaces between two successive iterations. Indeed, this happens when the fast computing processors wait for the slower ones to finish their iterations to be able to synchronously send their data to them.
424 Using this operation, faster processors waste a big amount of their computing power and thus consume uselessly energy.
425 The increase in the heterogeneity in the computing powers between the processors may increase proportionally these idle times.
426 Accordingly, this algorithm can be effectively run over a local cluster, where a high speed local network is used to reduce these idle times.
431 \includegraphics[scale=0.75]{fig/ch1/siac.pdf}
432 \caption{The SIAC Model}
436 Furthermore, the communications of the synchronous iterative algorithm can be replaced by asynchronous ones. The resulting algorithm is called Synchronous Iterations with Asynchronous
437 Communications and denoted as \textbf{SIAC} algorithm. The main principle of this algorithm is to use synchronize iterations while exchanging the data between the computing units asynchronously.
438 Moreover, each computing unit does not need to wait for its neighbours to receive the data messages
439 that it has sent, while it only waits to receive data from them. This can be implemented with SISC algorithm that is programmed in MPI by replacing the synchronous send of the messages by asynchronous ones, while keeping
440 the synchronous receive. The only advantage of this technique is to reduce the idle times between iterations by allowing the communications to overlap partially
441 with computations, see figure \ref{fig:ch1:16}. The idle times are not totally eliminated because the
442 fast computing nodes must wait for slow ones to send their data messages.
443 SISC and SIAC algorithms are not tolerant to the loss of data messages. Consequently, if one node crashes, all the other computing nodes are blocked.
447 \subsection{Asynchronous Parallel Iterative method}
449 The asynchronous iterations mean that all processors perform their iterations without considering the works of other processors. Each processor does not have to wait to receive
450 data messages from other processors and continues to compute the next iteration using the last data received from neighbours. Therefore, there are no idle times at all between the iterations as in Figure \ref{fig:ch1:17}. This figure indicates that fast processors can perform more iterations than the slower ones at the same time.
451 The asynchronous iterative algorithm that uses an asynchronous communications is called \textbf{AIAC} algorithm. Similarly to the SISC algorithm, the AIAC algorithm subdivides the global vectors $X$ into $M$ sub-vectors between the computing units. The main difference between the two algorithms is that these $M$ sub-vectors are not updated at each iteration in the AIAC algorithm because both iterations and communications are asynchronous.
456 \includegraphics[scale=0.75]{fig/ch1/aiac.pdf}
457 \caption{The AIAC Model}
461 The global convergence detection of the asynchronous parallel iterative is not trivial.
462 For more information about the convergence detection techniques of the asynchronous iterative methods, refer to \cite{ref40,ref41,ref42,ref43} for more details.
465 The implementation of the AIAC method is not easy, but it gives many advantages over the traditional synchronous iterative method:
468 \item It prevents the existence of idle times, since each processor does not have to wait
469 to receive the data messages from its neighbours to compute the next iteration.
471 \item Less sensitive for the heterogeneous communications and nodes' computing powers. In heterogeneous
472 platform, the fast nodes do not need to wait for the slow ones, and they can perform more iterations
473 compared to them. While in the traditional synchronous iterative methods, the fast computing nodes perform
474 the same number of iterations as the slow ones because they are blocked.
476 \item The loss of data messages is totally tolerant because each computing unit is not
477 blocked waiting for the message. If the message is lost, the destination node does not have to wait
478 for this data message and it uses the last received data to perform its iteration
481 \item In the grid architecture, the local clusters from different sites are
482 connected via a slow network with a high latency. The use of the AIAC model
483 reduces the delay of sending the data message over such slow network link and thus the performance
484 of the applications is not affected.
488 In addition to the difficulty of applying the asynchronous iterative model, it has some
489 disadvantages that can be summarized by these points:
492 \item It is not compatible with all types of the iterative applications because some of these
493 applications need to receive data messages at each iteration or they would not converge.
495 \item An asynchronous iterative method requires more iterations compared
496 to the synchronous one to converge. The increase in the number of iterations may increase proportionally
497 the execution time of the application if it is being executed on a fast homogeneous cluster.
499 \item Since each node does not receive new data messages at each iteration, detecting the global convergence
500 is harder than for the synchronous model.
501 Therefore, in AIAC algorithm a process can perform many iterations
502 without receiving any data messages from its neighbours. The absence of receiving new
503 data messages makes the data component invariant at the computing units and thus it provides
504 a false local convergence. At the reception of the first data message,
505 the local subsystem will diverge after computing the next iteration.
506 Therefore, special mechanisms are required for detecting the global convergence of a parallel
507 iterative algorithm implemented according to the asynchronous iteration model.
513 In work of this thesis, we are interested in optimizing the energy consumption of parallel iterative
514 methods running over clusters or grids.
518 \section{The energy consumption model of a parallel application}
521 Many researchers~\cite{ref46,ref47,ref48,ref49} divide the power consumed by a processor into
522 two power metrics: static power and dynamic power. The first one is
523 consumed as long as the computing unit is on, the latter is only consumed during
524 computation times. The dynamic power $P_{dyn}$ is related to the switching
525 activity $\alpha$, load capacitance $C_L$, the supply voltage $V$ and
526 operational frequency $F$, as shown in EQ~(\ref{eq:pd}).
529 P_\textit{dyn} = \alpha \cdot C_L \cdot V^2 \cdot F
531 The static power $P_{static}$ captures the leakage power as follows:
534 P_\textit{static} = V \cdot N_{trans} \cdot K_{design} \cdot I_{leak}
536 Where V is the supply voltage, $N_{trans}$ is the number of transistors,
537 $K_{design}$ is a design dependent parameter and $I_{leak}$ is a
538 technology-dependent parameter.
541 The dynamic voltage and frequency scaling technique (\textbf{DVFS}) is a process that is allowed in modern processors to reduce the dynamic
542 power by scaling down the voltage and frequency of the CPU. Its main objective is to
543 reduce the overall energy consumption of the CPU~\cite{ref77}. The operational frequency $F$
544 depends linearly on the supply voltage $V$ as follows:
550 Where $\beta$ is some of constant. This equation is used to study the change of the dynamic
551 voltage with respect to various frequency values in~\cite{ref47}. The reduction
552 process of the frequency can be expressed by the scaling factor $S$ which is the
553 ratio between the maximum and the new frequency as in EQ~(\ref{eq:s}).
556 S = \frac{F_\textit{max}}{F_\textit{new}}
558 The value of the scaling factor $S$ is greater than 1 when changing the
559 frequency of the CPU to any new frequency value~(\emph{P-state}) in the
560 governor. The CPU governor is an interface driver supplied by the operating
561 system's kernel to lower a core's frequency \cite{ref8}.
563 Depending on the equation \ref{eq:s}, the new frequency $F_{new}$ can be calculated as follows:
567 F_\textit{new}= S^{-1} \cdot F_\textit{max}
571 Replacing $V$ in \ref{eq:pd} as in \ref{eq:v} gives the following equation of the dynamic power consumption
572 as a function of the constant $\beta$ instead of $V$:
576 P_{dyn}= \alpha \cdot C_L \cdot (\beta \cdot F) ^2 \cdot F =\alpha \cdot C_L \cdot \beta^2 \cdot F^3
579 Replacing $F_{new}$ in \ref{eq:pd-beta} as in \ref{eq:fnew} gives the following equation for dynamic power consumption:
583 P_{dynNew} = \alpha \cdot C_L \cdot \beta^2 \cdot F_{new}^3 =
584 \alpha \cdot C_L \cdot \beta^2 \cdot F_{max}^3 \cdot S^{-3} =
585 \alpha \cdot C_L \cdot (\beta \cdot F_{max})^2 \cdot F_{max} \cdot S^{-3} \\
586 {} =\alpha \cdot C_L \cdot V^2 \cdot F_{max} \cdot S^{-3} = P_{dyn} \cdot S^{-3}
589 Where $P_{dynNew}$ and $P_{dyn}$ are the dynamic powers consumed with the
590 new frequency and the maximum frequency respectively.
592 According to (\ref{eq:pdnew}) the dynamic power is reduced by a factor of
593 $S^{-3}$ when reducing the frequency of a processor by a factor of $S$.
594 The energy consumption is measured in Joule, and can be calculated by
595 multiplying the power consumption, measured in watts, by the execution time of the program as follows:
599 Energy = Power \cdot T
602 According to the equation \ref{eq:E}, the dynamic energy consumption of the program executed in the time $T$ over one processor is the dynamic power multiplied by the execution time. Moreover, the frequency scaling factor $S$ increases the execution time of the processor linearly, then the new dynamic energy consumption can be computed as follows:
606 E_{dynNew} = P_{dyn} \cdot S^{-3} \cdot (T \cdot S)= S^{-2} \cdot P_{dyn} \cdot T
610 According to \cite{ref46,ref47}, the static power consumption $P_{static}$ does not changed when the frequency of the processor is scaled down. Therefore, the static energy consumption can be computed as follows:
613 E_{static} = S \cdot P_{static} \cdot T
617 Therefore, the energy consumption of an individual task running over one processor
618 is the sum of both static and dynamic energies that can be computed as follows:
621 E_{ind} = E_{dynNew} + E_{static} = S^{-2} \cdot P_{dyn} \cdot T + S \cdot P_{static} \cdot T
625 The total energy consumption of $N$ parallel task running on $N$ processors is the summation of the individual energies consumed by all processors. This model is developed and used by Rauber and Rünger~\cite{ref47}.
626 The total energy consumed by the parallel tasks running on a homogeneous platform is computed by sorting the execution time of the all parallel tasks in a descending order, then using EQ~(\ref{eq:energy}).
630 E_\textit{~all~tasks} = P_\textit{dyn} \cdot S_1^{-2} \cdot
631 \left( T_1 + \sum_{i=2}^{N} \frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2} \right) +
632 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot S_1 \cdot N
636 Where $N$ is the number of parallel tasks, $T_i$ for $i=1,\dots,N$ are
637 the execution times of the sorted tasks. Therefore, $T1$ is
638 the time of the slowest task, and $S_1$ its scaling factor which should be the
639 highest because they are proportional to the time values $T_i$.
640 Finally, model \ref{eq:energy} can be used to measure the energy consumed by any parallel application such as the iterative parallel applications with respect to the new scaled frequency value.
642 There are two drawbacks in this energy model as follows:
644 \item The message passing iterative program consists of communication and computation times.
645 This energy model assumes that the dynamic power is consumed during both these times.
646 While the processor during the communication times remains idle and only consumes the static
647 power, for more details see \cite{ref53}.
650 \item It is not well adapted to a heterogeneous architecture when there are different
651 types of processors, which consume different dynamic and static powers.
654 Therefore, one of the more important goals of this work is to develop a new energy models that
655 take into consideration the communication times in addition to the computation times in order to modelize and measure the energy consumptions of the parallel iterative methods. These models must be suitable to homogeneous or heterogeneous parallel architectures.
659 In this chapter, three sections have been presented to describe the parallel hardware architectures, the parallel iterative applications and the energy consumption model used to measure the energy consumption of these applications.
660 The different types of parallelism levels that can be implemented in software and hardware techniques have been explained in the first section. Afterwards, different types of parallel architectures have been discussed and classified according to the connection between the computation units and the memory model.
661 Both shared and distributed platforms as well as their depending parallel programming models have been categorized.
662 In the second section, the two types of parallel iterative methods: synchronous and asynchronous ones were presented. The synchronous iterative methods are well adapted to local homogeneous clusters with a high speed network link, while the asynchronous iterative methods are more suited to the distributed heterogeneous clusters.
663 Finally, in the third section, an energy consumption model proposed in the state of the art to measure the energy consumption of parallel applications was explained. This model cannot be used for all types of parallel architectures. Since, it assumes that the dynamic power is consumed during both of the communication and computation times, while the processor involved remains idle during the communication times and only consumes the static power. Moreover, it is not well adapted to heterogeneous architectures when there are different types of processors, that consume different dynamic and static powers.
665 For these reasons, in the next chapters of this thesis new energy consumption models are developed to efficiently predict the energy consumed by parallel iterative methods running on both homogeneous and heterogeneous architectures. Additionally, these energy models are used in a method that optimizes both energy consumption and performance of an iterative message passing application.