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8 \chapterauthor{Lilia Ziane Khodja, Raphaël Couturier, and Jacques Bahi}{Femto-ST Institute, University of Franche-Comte, France}
9 %\chapterauthor{Raphaël Couturier}{Femto-ST Institute, University of Franche-Comte, France}
10 %\chapterauthor{Jacques Bahi}{Femto-ST Institute, University of Franche-Comte, France}
12 \chapter[Solving linear systems with GMRES and CG methods on GPU clusters]{Solving sparse linear systems with GMRES and CG methods on GPU clusters}
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17 %%--------------------------%%
18 \section{Introduction}
20 Sparse linear systems are used to model many scientific and industrial problems,
21 such as the environmental simulations or the industrial processing of the complex or
22 nonNewtonian fluids. Moreover, the resolution of these problems often involves the
23 solving of such linear systems that are considered the most expensive process in
24 terms of execution time and memory space. Therefore, solving sparse linear systems
25 must be as efficient as possible in order to deal with problems of ever increasing
28 There are, in the jargon of numerical analysis, different methods of solving sparse
29 linear systems that can be classified in two classes: direct and iterative methods.
30 However, the iterative methods are often more suitable than their counterparts, direct
31 methods, to solve these systems. Indeed, they are less memory-consuming and easier
32 to parallelize on parallel computers than direct methods. Different computing platforms,
33 sequential and parallel computers, are used to solve sparse linear systems with iterative
34 solutions. Nowadays, graphics processing units (GPUs) have become attractive to solve
35 these systems, due to their computing power and their ability to compute faster than
38 In Section~\ref{ch12:sec:02}, we describe the general principle of two well-known iterative
39 methods: the conjugate gradient method and the generalized minimal residual method. In Section~\ref{ch12:sec:03},
40 we give the main key points of the parallel implementation of both methods on a cluster of
41 GPUs. Finally, in Section~\ref{ch12:sec:04}, we present the experimental results, obtained on a
42 CPU cluster and on a GPU cluster of solving large sparse linear systems.
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47 %%--------------------------%%
48 \section{Krylov iterative methods}
50 Let us consider the following system of $n$ linear equations\index{sparse linear system}
56 where $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$ is a sparse nonsingular square matrix, $x\in\mathbb{R}^{n}$
57 is the solution vector, $b\in\mathbb{R}^{n}$ is the right-hand side, and $n\in\mathbb{N}$ is a
60 The iterative methods\index{iterative method} for solving the large sparse linear system~(\ref{ch12:eq:01})
61 proceed by successive iterations of a same block of elementary operations, during which an
62 infinite number of approximate solutions $\{x_k\}_{k\geq 0}$ is computed. Indeed, from an
63 initial guess $x_0$, an iterative method determines at each iteration $k>0$ an approximate
64 solution $x_k$ which, gradually, converges to the exact solution $x^{*}$ as follows:
66 x^{*}=\lim\limits_{k\to\infty}x_{k}=A^{-1}b.
69 The number of iterations necessary to reach the exact solution $x^{*}$ is not known beforehand
70 and can be infinite. In practice, an iterative method often finds an approximate solution $\tilde{x}$
71 after a fixed number of iterations and/or when a given convergence criterion\index{convergence}
72 is satisfied as follows:
74 \|b-A\tilde{x}\| < \varepsilon,
77 where $\varepsilon<1$ is the required convergence tolerance threshold\index{convergence!tolerance threshold}.
79 Some of the most iterative methods that have proven their efficiency for solving large sparse
80 linear systems are those called \textit{Krylov subspace methods}~\cite{ch12:ref1}\index{iterative method!Krylov subspace}.
81 In the present chapter, we describe two Krylov methods which are widely used: the CG method (conjugate
82 gradient method) and the GMRES method (generalized minimal residual method). In practice, the
83 Krylov subspace methods are usually used with preconditioners that allow the improvement of their
84 convergence. So, in what follows, the CG and GMRES methods are used to solve the left-preconditioned\index{sparse linear system!preconditioned}
90 where $M$ is the preconditioning matrix.
95 \subsection{CG method}
96 \label{ch12:sec:02.01}
97 The conjugate gradient method was initially developed by Hestenes and Stiefel in 1952~\cite{ch12:ref2}.
98 It is one of the well-known iterative methods to solve large sparse linear systems. In addition, it
99 can be adapted to solve nonlinear equations and optimization problems. However, it can only be applied
100 to problems with positive definite symmetric matrices.
102 The main idea of the CG method\index{iterative method!CG} is the computation of a sequence of approximate
103 solutions $\{x_k\}_{k\geq 0}$ in a Krylov subspace\index{iterative method!Krylov~subspace} of order $k$ as
106 x_k \in x_0 + \mathcal{K}_k(A,r_0),
109 such that the Galerkin condition\index{Galerkin condition} must be satisfied:
111 r_k \bot \mathcal{K}_k(A,r_0),
114 where $x_0$ is the initial guess, $r_k=b-Ax_k$ is the residual of the computed solution $x_k$, and $\mathcal{K}_k$
115 the Krylov subspace of order $k$: \[\mathcal{K}_k(A,r_0) \equiv\text{span}\{r_0, Ar_0, A^2r_0,\ldots, A^{k-1}r_0\}.\]
116 In fact, CG is based on the construction of a sequence $\{p_k\}_{k\in\mathbb{N}}$ of direction vectors in $\mathcal{K}_k$
117 which are pairwise $A$-conjugate ($A$-orthogonal):
120 p_i^T A p_j = 0, & i\neq j.
124 At each iteration $k$, an approximate solution $x_k$ is computed by recurrence as follows:
127 x_k = x_{k-1} + \alpha_k p_k, & \alpha_k\in\mathbb{R}.
131 Consequently, the residuals $r_k$ are computed in the same way:
133 r_k = r_{k-1} - \alpha_k A p_k.
136 In the case where all residuals are nonzero, the direction vectors $p_k$ can be determined so that
137 the following recurrence holds:
140 p_0=r_0, & p_k=r_k+\beta_k p_{k-1}, & \beta_k\in\mathbb{R}.
144 Moreover, the scalars $\{\alpha_k\}_{k>0}$ are chosen so as to minimize the $A$-norm error $\|x^{*}-x_k\|_A$
145 over the Krylov subspace $\mathcal{K}_{k}$, and the scalars $\{\beta_k\}_{k>0}$ are chosen so as to ensure
146 that the direction vectors are pairwise $A$-conjugate. So, the assumption that matrix $A$ is symmetric and
147 the recurrences~(\ref{ch12:eq:08}) and~(\ref{ch12:eq:09}) allow the deduction that:
150 \alpha_{k}=\frac{r^{T}_{k-1}r_{k-1}}{p_{k}^{T}Ap_{k}}, & \beta_{k}=\frac{r_{k}^{T}r_{k}}{r_{k-1}^{T}r_{k-1}}.
155 \begin{algorithm}[!t]
156 Choose an initial guess $x_0$\;
157 $r_{0} = b - A x_{0}$\;
158 $convergence$ = false\;
160 \Repeat{convergence}{
161 $z_{k} = M^{-1} r_{k-1}$\;
162 $\rho_{k} = (r_{k-1},z_{k})$\;
166 $\beta_{k} = \rho_{k} / \rho_{k-1}$\;
167 $p_{k} = z_{k} + \beta_{k} \times p_{k-1}$\;
169 $q_{k} = A \times p_{k}$\;
170 $\alpha_{k} = \rho_{k} / (p_{k},q_{k})$\;
171 $x_{k} = x_{k-1} + \alpha_{k} \times p_{k}$\;
172 $r_{k} = r_{k-1} - \alpha_{k} \times q_{k}$\;
173 \eIf{$(\rho_{k} < \varepsilon)$ {\bf or} $(k \geq maxiter)$}{
174 $convergence$ = true\;
179 \caption{left-preconditioned CG method}
183 Algorithm~\ref{ch12:alg:01} shows the main key points of the preconditioned CG method. It allows
184 the solving the left-preconditioned\index{sparse linear system!preconditioned} sparse linear system~(\ref{ch12:eq:11}).
185 In this algorithm, $\varepsilon$ is the convergence tolerance threshold, $maxiter$ is the maximum
186 number of iterations, and $(\cdot,\cdot)$ defines the dot product between two vectors in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$.
187 At every iteration, a direction vector $p_k$ is determined, so that it is orthogonal to the preconditioned
188 residual $z_k$ and to the direction vectors $\{p_i\}_{i<k}$ previously determined (from line~$8$ to
189 line~$13$). Then, at lines~$16$ and~$17$, the iterate $x_k$ and the residual $r_k$ are computed using
190 formulas~(\ref{ch12:eq:07}) and~(\ref{ch12:eq:08}), respectively. The CG method converges after, at
191 most, $n$ iterations. In practice, the CG algorithm stops when the tolerance threshold\index{convergence!tolerance threshold}
192 $\varepsilon$ and/or the maximum number of iterations\index{convergence!maximum number of iterations}
193 $maxiter$ is reached.
198 \subsection{GMRES method}
199 \label{ch12:sec:02.02}
200 The iterative GMRES method was developed by Saad and Schultz in 1986~\cite{ch12:ref3} as a generalization
201 of the minimum residual method MINRES~\cite{ch12:ref4}\index{iterative method!MINRES}. Indeed, GMRES can
202 be applied for solving symmetric or nonsymmetric linear systems.
204 The main principle of the GMRES method\index{iterative method!GMRES} is to find an approximation minimizing
205 at best the residual norm. In fact, GMRES computes a sequence of approximate solutions $\{x_k\}_{k>0}$ in
206 a Krylov subspace\index{iterative method!Krylov subspace} $\mathcal{K}_k$ as follows:
209 x_k \in x_0 + \mathcal{K}_k(A, v_1),& v_1=\frac{r_0}{\|r_0\|_2},
213 so that the Petrov-Galerkin condition\index{Petrov-Galerkin condition} is satisfied:
216 r_k \bot A \mathcal{K}_k(A, v_1).
220 GMRES uses the Arnoldi iterations~\cite{ch12:ref5}\index{iterative method!Arnoldi iterations} to construct an
221 orthonormal basis $V_k$ for the Krylov subspace $\mathcal{K}_k$ and an upper Hessenberg matrix\index{Hessenberg matrix}
222 $\bar{H}_k$ of order $(k+1)\times k$:
225 V_k = \{v_1, v_2,\ldots,v_k\}, & \forall k>1, v_k=A^{k-1}v_1,
231 A V_k = V_{k+1} \bar{H}_k.
235 Then, at each iteration $k$, an approximate solution $x_k$ is computed in the Krylov subspace $\mathcal{K}_k$
236 spanned by $V_k$ as follows:
239 x_k = x_0 + V_k y, & y\in\mathbb{R}^{k}.
243 From both formulas~(\ref{ch12:eq:15}) and~(\ref{ch12:eq:16}) and $r_k=b-Ax_k$, we can deduce that
246 r_{k} & = & b - A (x_{0} + V_{k}y) \\
247 & = & r_{0} - AV_{k}y \\
248 & = & \beta v_{1} - V_{k+1}\bar{H}_{k}y \\
249 & = & V_{k+1}(\beta e_{1} - \bar{H}_{k}y),
253 such that $\beta=\|r_0\|_2$ and $e_1=(1,0,\cdots,0)$ is the first vector of the canonical basis of
254 $\mathbb{R}^k$. So, the vector $y$ is chosen in $\mathbb{R}^k$ so as to minimize at best the Euclidean
255 norm of the residual $r_k$. Consequently, a linear least-squares problem of size $k$ is solved:
257 \underset{y\in\mathbb{R}^{k}}{min}\|r_{k}\|_{2}=\underset{y\in\mathbb{R}^{k}}{min}\|\beta e_{1}-\bar{H}_{k}y\|_{2}.
260 The QR factorization of matrix $\bar{H}_k$ is used (the decomposition of the matrix $\bar{H}$ into $Q$ and $R$ matrices)
261 to compute the solution of this problem by using
262 Givens rotations~\cite{ch12:ref1,ch12:ref3}, such that
265 \bar{H}_{k}=Q_{k}R_{k}, & Q_{k}\in\mathbb{R}^{(k+1)\times (k+1)}, & R_{k}\in\mathbb{R}^{(k+1)\times k},
269 where $Q_k$ is an orthogonal matrix and $R_k$ is an upper triangular matrix.
271 The GMRES method computes an approximate solution with a sufficient precision after, at most, $n$
272 iterations ($n$ is the size of the sparse linear system to be solved). However, the GMRES algorithm
273 must construct and store in the memory an orthonormal basis $V_k$ whose size is proportional to the
274 number of iterations required to achieve the convergence. Then, to avoid a huge memory storage, the
275 GMRES method must be restarted at each $m$ iterations, such that $m$ is very small ($m\ll n$), and
276 with $x_m$ as the initial guess to the next iteration. This allows the limitation of the size of the basis
277 $V$ to $m$ orthogonal vectors.
279 \begin{algorithm}[!t]
280 Choose an initial guess $x_0$\;
281 $convergence$ = false\;
283 $r_{0} = M^{-1}(b-Ax_{0})$\;
284 $\beta = \|r_{0}\|_{2}$\;
285 \While{$\neg convergence$}{
286 $v_{1} = r_{0}/\beta$\;
287 \For{$j=1$ \KwTo $m$}{
288 $w_{j} = M^{-1}Av_{j}$\;
289 \For{$i=1$ \KwTo $j$}{
290 $h_{i,j} = (w_{j},v_{i})$\;
291 $w_{j} = w_{j}-h_{i,j}v_{i}$\;
293 $h_{j+1,j} = \|w_{j}\|_{2}$\;
294 $v_{j+1} = w_{j}/h_{j+1,j}$\;
296 Set $V_{m}=\{v_{j}\}_{1\leq j \leq m}$ and $\bar{H}_{m}=(h_{i,j})$ is an upper Hessenberg matrix of size $(m+1)\times m$\;
297 Solve a least-squares problem of size $m$: $min_{y\in\mathrm{I\!R}^{m}}\|\beta e_{1}-\bar{H}_{m}y\|_{2}$\;
298 $x_{m} = x_{0}+V_{m}y_{m}$\;
299 $r_{m} = M^{-1}(b-Ax_{m})$\;
300 $\beta = \|r_{m}\|_{2}$\;
301 \eIf{ $(\beta<\varepsilon)$ {\bf or} $(k\geq maxiter)$}{
302 $convergence$ = true\;
309 \caption{left-preconditioned GMRES method with restarts}
313 Algorithm~\ref{ch12:alg:02} shows the key points of the GMRES method with restarts.
314 It solves the left-preconditioned\index{sparse linear system!preconditioned} sparse linear
315 system~(\ref{ch12:eq:11}), such that $M$ is the preconditioning matrix. At each iteration
316 $k$, GMRES uses the Arnoldi iterations\index{iterative method!Arnoldi iterations} (defined from
317 line~$7$ to line~$17$) to construct a basis $V_m$ of $m$ orthogonal vectors and an upper
318 Hessenberg matrix\index{Hessenberg matrix} $\bar{H}_m$ of size $(m+1)\times m$. Then, it
319 solves the linear least-squares problem of size $m$ to find the vector $y\in\mathbb{R}^{m}$
320 which minimizes at best the residual norm (line~$18$). Finally, it computes an approximate
321 solution $x_m$ in the Krylov subspace spanned by $V_m$ (line~$19$). The GMRES algorithm is
322 stopped when the residual norm is sufficiently small ($\|r_m\|_2<\varepsilon$) and/or the
323 maximum number of iterations\index{convergence!maximum number of iterations} ($maxiter$)
327 %%--------------------------%%
329 %%--------------------------%%
330 \section{Parallel implementation on a GPU cluster}
332 In this section, we present the parallel algorithms of both iterative CG\index{iterative method!CG}
333 and GMRES\index{iterative method!GMRES} methods for GPU clusters. The implementation is performed on
334 a GPU cluster composed of different computing nodes, such that each node is a CPU core managed by one
335 MPI (message passing interface) process and equipped with a GPU card. The parallelization of these algorithms is carried out by
336 using the MPI communication routines between the GPU computing nodes\index{computing node} and the
337 CUDA (compute unified device architecture) programming environment inside each node. In what follows, the algorithms of the iterative methods
338 are called iterative solvers.
343 \subsection{Data partitioning}
344 \label{ch12:sec:03.01}
345 The parallel solving of the large sparse linear system~(\ref{ch12:eq:11}) requires a data partitioning
346 between the computing nodes of the GPU cluster. Let $p$ denote the number of the computing nodes on the
347 GPU cluster. The partitioning operation consists of the decomposition of the vectors and matrices, involved
348 in the iterative solver, in $p$ portions. Indeed, this operation allows the assignment to each computing node
351 \item a portion of size $\frac{n}{p}$ elements of each vector,
352 \item a sparse rectangular submatrix $A_i$ of size $(\frac{n}{p},n)$, and
353 \item a square preconditioning submatrix $M_i$ of size $(\frac{n}{p},\frac{n}{p})$,
355 where $n$ is the size of the sparse linear system to be solved. In the first instance, we perform a naive
356 row-wise partitioning (row-by-row decomposition) on the data of the sparse linear systems to be solved.
357 Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:01} shows an example of a row-wise data partitioning between four computing nodes
358 of a sparse linear system (sparse matrix $A$, solution vector $x$, and right-hand side $b$) of size $16$
362 \centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{Chapters/chapter12/figures/partition}}
363 \caption{A data partitioning of the sparse matrix $A$, the solution vector $x$, and the right-hand side $b$ into four portions.}
370 \subsection{GPU computing}
371 \label{ch12:sec:03.02}
372 After the partitioning operation, all the data involved from this operation must be
373 transferred from the CPU memories to the GPU memories, in order to be processed by
374 GPUs. We use two functions of the CUBLAS\index{CUBLAS} library (CUDA Basic Linear
375 Algebra Subroutines) developed by NVIDIA~\cite{ch12:ref6}: \verb+cublasAlloc()+
376 for the memory allocations on GPUs and \verb+cublasSetVector()+ for the memory
377 copies from the CPUs to the GPUs.
379 An efficient implementation of CG and GMRES solvers on a GPU cluster requires the
380 determining of all parts of their codes that can be executed in parallel and, thus, takes
381 advantage of the GPU acceleration. As many Krylov subspace methods, the CG and GMRES
382 methods are mainly based on arithmetic operations dealing with vectors or matrices:
383 sparse matrix-vector multiplications, scalar-vector multiplications, dot products,
384 Euclidean norms, AXPY operations ($y\leftarrow ax+y$ where $x$ and $y$ are vectors and $a$ is a scalar),
385 and so on. These vector operations are often easy to parallelize
386 and they are more efficient on parallel computers when they work on large vectors.
387 Therefore, all the vector operations used in CG and GMRES solvers must be executed
388 by the GPUs as kernels.
390 We use the kernels of the CUBLAS library to compute some vector operations of CG and
391 GMRES solvers. The following kernels of CUBLAS (dealing with double floating point)
392 are used: \verb+cublasDdot()+ for the dot products, \verb+cublasDnrm2()+ for the
393 Euclidean norms, and \verb+cublasDaxpy()+ for the AXPY operations ($y\leftarrow ax+y$, compute a scalar-vector product and add
394 the result to a vector). For the rest of
395 the data-parallel operations, we code their kernels in CUDA. In the CG solver, we
396 develop a kernel for the XPAY operation ($y\leftarrow x+ay$) used in line~$12$ in
397 Algorithm~\ref{ch12:alg:01}. In the GMRES solver, we program a kernel for the scalar-vector
398 multiplication (lines~$7$ and~$15$ in Algorithm~\ref{ch12:alg:02}), a kernel to
399 solve the least-squares problem, and a kernel to update the elements of the solution
402 The least-squares problem in the GMRES method is solved by performing a QR factorization
403 on the Hessenberg matrix\index{Hessenberg matrix} $\bar{H}_m$ with plane rotations and,
404 then, solving the triangular system by backward substitutions to compute $y$. Consequently,
405 solving the least-squares problem on the GPU is not efficient. Indeed, the triangular
406 solves are not easy to parallelize and inefficient on GPUs. However, the least-squares
407 problem to solve in the GMRES method with restarts has, generally, a very small size $m$.
408 Therefore, we develop an inexpensive kernel which must be executed by a single CUDA thread.
410 The most important operation in CG\index{iterative method!CG} and GMRES\index{iterative method!GMRES}
411 methods is the SpMV multiplication (sparse matrix-vector multiplication)\index{SpMV multiplication},
412 because it is often an expensive operation in terms of execution time and memory space.
413 Moreover, it requires taking care of the storage format of the sparse matrix in the
414 memory. Indeed, the naive storage, row-by-row or column-by-column, of a sparse matrix
415 can cause a significant waste of memory space and execution time. In addition, the sparse
416 nature of the matrix often leads to irregular memory accesses to read the matrix nonzero
417 values. So, the computation of the SpMV multiplication on GPUs can involve noncoalesced
418 accesses to the global memory, which slows down its performances even more. One of the
419 most efficient compressed storage formats\index{compressed storage format} of sparse
420 matrices on GPUs is the HYB (hybrid)\index{compressed storage format!HYB} format~\cite{ch12:ref7}.
421 It is a combination of ELLpack (ELL) and Coordinate (COO) formats. Indeed, it stores
422 a typical number of nonzero values per row in ELL\index{compressed storage format!ELL}
423 format and the remaining entries of exceptional rows in COO format. It combines the efficiency
424 of ELL due to the regularity of its memory accesses and the flexibility of COO\index{compressed storage format!COO}
425 which is insensitive to the matrix structure. Consequently, we use the HYB kernel~\cite{ch12:ref8}
426 developed by NVIDIA to implement the SpMV multiplication of CG and GMRES methods on GPUs.
427 Moreover, to avoid the noncoalesced accesses to the high-latency global memory, we fill
428 the elements of the iterate vector $x$ in the cached texture memory.
433 \subsection{Data communications}
434 \label{ch12:sec:03.03}
435 All the computing nodes of the GPU cluster execute in parallel the same iterative solver
436 (Algorithm~\ref{ch12:alg:01} or Algorithm~\ref{ch12:alg:02}) adapted to GPUs, but on their
437 own portions of the sparse linear system\index{sparse linear system}: $M^{-1}_iA_ix_i=M^{-1}_ib_i$,
438 $0\leq i<p$. However, in order to solve the complete sparse linear system~(\ref{ch12:eq:11}),
439 synchronizations must be performed between the local computations of the computing nodes over
440 the cluster. In what follows, two computing nodes sharing data are called neighboring nodes\index{neighboring node}.
442 As already mentioned, the most important operation of CG and GMRES methods is the SpMV multiplication.
443 In the parallel implementation of the iterative methods, each computing node $i$ performs the
444 SpMV multiplication on its own sparse rectangular submatrix $A_i$. Locally, it has only subvectors
445 of size $\frac{n}{p}$ corresponding to rows of its submatrix $A_i$. However, it also requires
446 the vector elements of its neighbors, corresponding to the column indices on which its submatrix
447 has nonzero values (see Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:01}). So, in addition to the local vectors, each
448 node must also manage vector elements shared with neighbors and required to compute the SpMV
449 multiplication. Therefore, the iterate vector $x$ managed by each computing node is composed
450 of a local subvector $x^{local}$ of size $\frac{n}{p}$ and a subvector of shared elements $x^{shared}$.
451 In the same way, the vector used to construct the orthonormal basis of the Krylov subspace (vectors
452 $p$ and $v$ in CG and GMRES methods, respectively) is composed of a local subvector and a shared
455 Therefore, before computing the SpMV multiplication\index{SpMV multiplication}, the neighboring
456 nodes\index{neighboring node} over the GPU cluster must exchange between them the shared vector
457 elements necessary to compute this multiplication. First, each computing node determines, in its
458 local subvector, the vector elements needed by other nodes. Then, the neighboring nodes exchange
459 between them these shared vector elements. The data exchanges are implemented by using the MPI
460 point-to-point communication routines: blocking\index{MPI!blocking} sends with \verb+MPI_Send()+
461 and nonblocking\index{MPI!nonblocking} receives with \verb+MPI_Irecv()+. Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:02}
462 shows an example of data exchanges between \textit{Node 1} and its neighbors \textit{Node 0}, \textit{Node 2},
463 and \textit{Node 3}. In this example, the iterate matrix $A$ split between these four computing
464 nodes is that presented in Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:01}.
467 \centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.30]{Chapters/chapter12/figures/compress}}
468 \caption{Data exchanges between \textit{Node 1} and its neighbors \textit{Node 0}, \textit{Node 2}, and \textit{Node 3}.}
472 After the synchronization operation, the computing nodes receive, from their respective neighbors,
473 the shared elements in a subvector stored in a compressed format. However, in order to compute the
474 SpMV multiplication, the computing nodes operate on sparse global vectors (see Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:02}).
475 In this case, the received vector elements must be copied to the corresponding indices in the global
476 vector. So as not to need to perform this at each iteration, we propose to reorder the columns of
477 each submatrix $\{A_i\}_{0\leq i<p}$, so that the shared subvectors could be used in their compressed
478 storage formats. Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:03} shows a reordering of a sparse submatrix (submatrix of
482 \centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{Chapters/chapter12/figures/reorder}}
483 \caption{Columns reordering of a sparse submatrix.}
487 A GPU cluster\index{GPU!cluster}\index{multi-GPU} is a parallel platform with a distributed memory. So, the synchronizations
488 and communication data between GPU nodes are carried out by passing messages. However, a GPU cannot exchange data
489 with other GPUs in a direct way. Then, CPUs via MPI processes are in charge of the synchronizations within the GPU
490 cluster. Consequently, the vector elements to be exchanged must be copied from the GPU memory to the CPU memory
491 and vice versa before and after the synchronization operation between CPUs. We have used the CUBLAS\index{CUBLAS}
492 communication subroutines to perform the data transfers between a CPU core and its GPU: \verb+cublasGetVector()+
493 and \verb+cublasSetVector()+. Finally, in addition to the data exchanges, GPU nodes perform reduction operations
494 to compute in parallel the dot products and Euclidean norms. This is implemented by using the MPI global communication\index{MPI!global}
495 \verb+MPI_Allreduce()+.
499 %%--------------------------%%
501 %%--------------------------%%
502 \section{Experimental results}
504 In this section, we present the performances of the parallel CG and GMRES linear solvers obtained
505 on a cluster of $12$ GPUs. Indeed, this GPU cluster of tests is composed of six machines connected
506 by a $20$GB/s InfiniBand network. Each machine is a Quad-Core Xeon E5530 CPU running at $2.4$GHz and
507 providing $12$GB of RAM with a memory bandwidth of $25.6$GB/s. In addition, two Tesla C1060 GPUs are
508 connected to each machine via a PCI-Express 16x Gen 2.0 interface with a throughput of $8$GB/s. A
509 Tesla C1060 GPU contains $240$ cores running at $1.3$GHz and providing a global memory of $4$GB with
510 a memory bandwidth of $102$GB/s. Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:04} shows the general scheme of the GPU cluster\index{GPU!cluster}
511 that we used in the experimental tests.
513 Linux cluster version 2.6.39 OS is installed on CPUs. C programming language is used to code
514 the parallel algorithms of both methods on the GPU cluster. CUDA version 4.0~\cite{ch12:ref9}
515 is used to program GPUs, using the CUBLAS library~\cite{ch12:ref6} to deal with vector operations
516 in GPUs and, finally, MPI routines of OpenMPI 1.3.3 are used to carry out the communications between
517 CPU cores. Indeed, the experiments are done on a cluster of $12$ computing nodes, where each node
518 is managed by one MPI process and is composed of one CPU core and one GPU card.
521 \centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.25]{Chapters/chapter12/figures/cluster}}
522 \caption{General scheme of the GPU cluster of tests composed of six machines, each with two GPUs.}
526 All tests are made on double-precision floating point operations. The parameters of both linear
527 solvers are initialized as follows: the residual tolerance threshold $\varepsilon=10^{-12}$, the
528 maximum number of iterations $maxiter=500$, the right-hand side $b$ is filled with $1.0$, and the
529 initial guess $x_0$ is filled with $0.0$. In addition, we limited the Arnoldi iterations\index{iterative method!Arnoldi iterations}
530 used in the GMRES method to $16$ iterations ($m=16$). For the sake of simplicity, we have chosen
531 the preconditioner $M$ as the main diagonal of the sparse matrix $A$. Indeed, it allows us to easily
532 compute the required inverse matrix $M^{-1}$, and it provides a relatively good preconditioning for
533 not too ill-conditioned matrices. In the GPU computing, the size of thread blocks is fixed to $512$
534 threads. Finally, the performance results, presented hereafter, are obtained from the mean value
535 over $10$ executions of the same parallel linear solver and for the same input data.
538 \centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.30]{Chapters/chapter12/figures/matrices}}
539 \caption{Sketches of sparse matrices chosen from the University of Florida collection.}
543 To get more realistic results, we have tested the CG and GMRES algorithms on sparse matrices of the University of Florida
544 collection~\cite{ch12:ref10}, that arise in a wide spectrum of real-world applications. We have chosen six
545 symmetric sparse matrices and six nonsymmetric ones from this collection. In Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:05},
546 we show the structures of these matrices and in Table~\ref{ch12:tab:01} we present their main characteristics
547 which are the number of rows, the total number of nonzero values, and the maximal bandwidth. In
548 the present chapter, the bandwidth of a sparse matrix is defined as the number of matrix columns separating
549 the first and the last nonzero value on a matrix row.
555 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
557 {\bf Matrix Type} & {\bf Matrix Name} & {\bf \# Rows} & {\bf \# Nonzeros} & {\bf Bandwidth} \\ \hline \hline
559 \multirow{6}{*}{Symmetric} & 2cubes\_sphere & $101,492$ & $1,647,264$ & $100,464$ \\
561 & ecology2 & $999,999$ & $4,995,991$ & $2,001$ \\
563 & finan512 & $74,752$ & $596,992$ & $74,725$ \\
565 & G3\_circuit & $1,585,478$ & $7,660,826$ & $1,219,059$ \\
567 & shallow\_water2 & $81,920$ & $327,680$ & $58,710$ \\
569 & thermal2 & $1,228,045$ & $8,580,313$ & $1,226,629$ \\ \hline \hline
571 \multirow{6}{*}{Nonsymmetric} & cage13 & $445,315$ & $7,479,343$ & $318,788$\\
573 & crashbasis & $160,000$ & $1,750,416$ & $120,202$ \\
575 & FEM\_3D\_thermal2 & $147,900$ & $3,489.300$ & $117,827$ \\
577 & language & $399,130$ & $1,216,334$ & $398,622$\\
579 & poli\_large & $15,575$ & $33,074$ & $15,575$ \\
581 & torso3 & $259,156$ & $4,429,042$ & $216,854$ \\ \hline
584 \caption{Main characteristics of sparse matrices chosen from the University of Florida collection.}
591 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
593 {\bf Matrix} & $\mathbf{Time_{cpu}}$ & $\mathbf{Time_{gpu}}$ & $\mathbf{\tau}$ & $\mathbf{\#~Iter.}$ & $\mathbf{Prec.}$ & $\mathbf{\Delta}$ \\ \hline \hline
595 2cubes\_sphere & $0.132s$ & $0.069s$ & $1.93$ & $12$ & $1.14e$-$09$ & $3.47e$-$18$ \\
597 ecology2 & $0.026s$ & $0.017s$ & $1.52$ & $13$ & $5.06e$-$09$ & $8.33e$-$17$ \\
599 finan512 & $0.053s$ & $0.036s$ & $1.49$ & $12$ & $3.52e$-$09$ & $1.66e$-$16$ \\
601 G3\_circuit & $0.704s$ & $0.466s$ & $1.51$ & $16$ & $4.16e$-$10$ & $4.44e$-$16$ \\
603 shallow\_water2 & $0.017s$ & $0.010s$ & $1.68$ & $5$ & $2.24e$-$14$ & $3.88e$-$26$ \\
605 thermal2 & $1.172s$ & $0.622s$ & $1.88$ & $15$ & $5.11e$-$09$ & $3.33e$-$16$ \\ \hline
607 \caption{Performances of the parallel CG method on a cluster of 24 CPU cores vs. on a cluster of 12 GPUs.}
615 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
617 {\bf Matrix} & $\mathbf{Time_{cpu}}$ & $\mathbf{Time_{gpu}}$ & $\mathbf{\tau}$ & $\mathbf{\#~Iter.}$ & $\mathbf{Prec.}$ & $\mathbf{\Delta}$ \\ \hline \hline
619 2cubes\_sphere & $0.234s$ & $0.124s$ & $1.88$ & $21$ & $2.10e$-$14$ & $3.47e$-$18$ \\
621 ecology2 & $0.076s$ & $0.035s$ & $2.15$ & $21$ & $4.30e$-$13$ & $4.38e$-$15$ \\
623 finan512 & $0.073s$ & $0.052s$ & $1.40$ & $17$ & $3.21e$-$12$ & $5.00e$-$16$ \\
625 G3\_circuit & $1.016s$ & $0.649s$ & $1.56$ & $22$ & $1.04e$-$12$ & $2.00e$-$15$ \\
627 shallow\_water2 & $0.061s$ & $0.044s$ & $1.38$ & $17$ & $5.42e$-$22$ & $2.71e$-$25$ \\
629 thermal2 & $1.666s$ & $0.880s$ & $1.89$ & $21$ & $6.58e$-$12$ & $2.77e$-$16$ \\ \hline \hline
631 cage13 & $0.721s$ & $0.338s$ & $2.13$ & $26$ & $3.37e$-$11$ & $2.66e$-$15$ \\
633 crashbasis & $1.349s$ & $0.830s$ & $1.62$ & $121$ & $9.10e$-$12$ & $6.90e$-$12$ \\
635 FEM\_3D\_thermal2 & $0.797s$ & $0.419s$ & $1.90$ & $64$ & $3.87e$-$09$ & $9.09e$-$13$ \\
637 language & $2.252s$ & $1.204s$ & $1.87$ & $90$ & $1.18e$-$10$ & $8.00e$-$11$ \\
639 poli\_large & $0.097s$ & $0.095s$ & $1.02$ & $69$ & $4.98e$-$11$ & $1.14e$-$12$ \\
641 torso3 & $4.242s$ & $2.030s$ & $2.09$ & $175$ & $2.69e$-$10$ & $1.78e$-$14$ \\ \hline
644 \caption{Performances of the parallel GMRES method on a cluster 24 CPU cores vs. on cluster of 12 GPUs.}
649 Tables~\ref{ch12:tab:02} and~\ref{ch12:tab:03} show the performances of the parallel
650 CG and~GMRES solvers, respectively, for solving linear systems associated to the sparse
651 matrices presented in Table~\ref{ch12:tab:01}. They allow us to compare the performances
652 obtained on a cluster of $24$ CPU cores and on a cluster of $12$ GPUs. However, Table~\ref{ch12:tab:02}
653 shows the performances of solving only symmetric sparse linear systems, due to the inability
654 of the CG method to solve the nonsymmetric systems. In both tables, the second and third
655 columns give, respectively, the execution times in seconds obtained on $24$ CPU cores
656 ($Time_{cpu}$) and that obtained on $12$ GPUs ($Time_{gpu}$). Moreover, we take into account
657 the relative gains $\tau$ of a solver implemented on the GPU cluster compared to the same
658 solver implemented on the CPU cluster. The relative gains\index{relative gain}, presented
659 in the fourth column, are computed as a ratio of the CPU execution time over the GPU
662 \tau = \frac{Time_{cpu}}{Time_{gpu}}.
665 In addition, Tables~\ref{ch12:tab:02} and~\ref{ch12:tab:03} give the number of iterations
666 ($iter$), the precision ($prec$) of the solution computed on the GPU cluster, and the difference
667 $\Delta$ between the solution computed on the CPU cluster and that computed on the GPU cluster.
668 Both parameters $prec$ and $\Delta$ allow us to validate and verify the accuracy of the solution
669 computed on the GPU cluster. We have computed them as follows:
671 \Delta = max|x^{cpu}-x^{gpu}|,\\
672 prec = max|M^{-1}r^{gpu}|,
674 where $\Delta$ is the maximum vector element, in absolute value, of the difference between
675 the two solutions $x^{cpu}$ and $x^{gpu}$ computed, respectively, on CPU and GPU clusters and
676 $prec$ is the maximum element, in absolute value, of the residual vector $r^{gpu}\in\mathbb{R}^{n}$
677 of the solution $x^{gpu}$. Thus, we can see that the solutions obtained on the GPU cluster
678 were computed with a sufficient accuracy (about $10^{-10}$) and they are, more or less, equivalent
679 to those computed on the CPU cluster with a small difference ranging from $10^{-10}$ to $10^{-26}$.
680 However, we can notice from the relative gains $\tau$ that it is not efficient to use multiple
681 GPUs for solving small sparse linear systems. In fact, a small sparse matrix does not allow us to
682 maximize utilization of GPU cores. In addition, the communications required to synchronize the
683 computations over the cluster increase the idle times of GPUs and slow down the parallel
684 computations further.
686 Consequently, in order to test the performances of the parallel solvers, we developed in C programming
687 language a generator of large sparse matrices. This generator takes a matrix from the University of Florida collection~\cite{ch12:ref10}
688 as an initial matrix to build large sparse matrices exceeding ten million rows. It must be executed
689 in parallel by the MPI processes of the computing nodes, so that each process can build its sparse
690 submatrix. In the first experimental tests, we focused on sparse matrices having a banded structure,
691 because they are those arising the most in the majority of numerical problems. So to generate the global sparse matrix,
692 each MPI process constructs its submatrix by performing several copies of an initial sparse matrix chosen
693 from the University of Florida collection. Then, it puts all these copies on the main diagonal of the global matrix
694 (see Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:06}). Moreover, the empty spaces between two successive copies in the main
695 diagonal are filled with subcopies (left-copy and right-copy in Figure~\ref{ch12:fig:06}) of the same
699 \centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.30]{Chapters/chapter12/figures/generation}}
700 \caption{Parallel generation of a large sparse matrix by four computing nodes.}
706 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
708 {\bf Matrix Type} & {\bf Matrix Name} & {\bf \# Nonzeros} & {\bf Bandwidth} \\ \hline \hline
710 \multirow{6}{*}{Symmetric} & 2cubes\_sphere & $413,703,602$ & $198,836$ \\
712 & ecology2 & $124,948,019$ & $2,002$ \\
714 & finan512 & $278,175,945$ & $123,900$ \\
716 & G3\_circuit & $125,262,292$ & $1,891,887$ \\
718 & shallow\_water2 & $100,235,292$ & $62,806$ \\
720 & thermal2 & $175,300,284$ & $2,421,285$ \\ \hline \hline
722 \multirow{6}{*}{Nonsymmetric} & cage13 & $435,770,480$ & $352,566$ \\
724 & crashbasis & $409,291,236$ & $200,203$ \\
726 & FEM\_3D\_thermal2 & $595,266,787$ & $206,029$ \\
728 & language & $76,912,824$ & $398,626$ \\
730 & poli\_large & $53,322,580$ & $15,576$ \\
732 & torso3 & $433,795,264$ & $328,757$ \\ \hline
735 \caption{Main characteristics of sparse banded matrices generated from those of the University of Florida collection.}
739 We have used the parallel CG and GMRES algorithms for solving sparse linear systems of $25$
740 million unknown values. The sparse matrices associated to these linear systems are generated
741 from those presented in Table~\ref{ch12:tab:01}. Their main characteristics are given in Table~\ref{ch12:tab:04}.
742 Tables~\ref{ch12:tab:05} and~\ref{ch12:tab:06} show the performances of the parallel CG and
743 GMRES solvers, respectively, obtained on a cluster of $24$ CPU cores and on a cluster of $12$
744 GPUs. Obviously, we can notice from these tables that solving large sparse linear systems on
745 a GPU cluster is more efficient than on a CPU cluster (see relative gains $\tau$). We can also
746 notice that the execution times of the CG method, whether in a CPU cluster or in a GPU cluster,
747 are better than those of the GMRES method for solving large symmetric linear systems. In fact, the
748 CG method is characterized by a better convergence\index{convergence} rate and a shorter execution
749 time of an iteration than those of the GMRES method. Moreover, an iteration of the parallel GMRES
750 method requires more data exchanges between computing nodes compared to the parallel CG method.
754 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
756 {\bf Matrix} & $\mathbf{Time_{cpu}}$ & $\mathbf{Time_{gpu}}$ & $\mathbf{\tau}$ & $\mathbf{\#~Iter.}$ & $\mathbf{Prec.}$ & $\mathbf{\Delta}$ \\ \hline \hline
758 2cubes\_sphere & $1.625s$ & $0.401s$ & $4.05$ & $14$ & $5.73e$-$11$ & $5.20e$-$18$ \\
760 ecology2 & $0.856s$ & $0.103s$ & $8.27$ & $15$ & $3.75e$-$10$ & $1.11e$-$16$ \\
762 finan512 & $1.210s$ & $0.354s$ & $3.42$ & $14$ & $1.04e$-$10$ & $2.77e$-$16$ \\
764 G3\_circuit & $1.346s$ & $0.263s$ & $5.12$ & $17$ & $1.10e$-$10$ & $5.55e$-$16$ \\
766 shallow\_water2 & $0.397s$ & $0.055s$ & $7.23$ & $7$ & $3.43e$-$15$ & $5.17e$-$26$ \\
768 thermal2 & $1.411s$ & $0.244s$ & $5.78$ & $16$ & $1.67e$-$09$ & $3.88e$-$16$ \\ \hline
770 \caption{Performances of the parallel CG method for solving linear systems associated to sparse banded matrices on a cluster of 24 CPU cores vs.
771 on a cluster of 12 GPUs.}
779 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
781 {\bf Matrix} & $\mathbf{Time_{cpu}}$ & $\mathbf{Time_{gpu}}$ & $\mathbf{\tau}$ & $\mathbf{\#~Iter.}$ & $\mathbf{Prec.}$ & $\mathbf{\Delta}$ \\ \hline \hline
783 2cubes\_sphere & $3.597s$ & $0.514s$ & $6.99$ & $21$ & $2.11e$-$14$ & $8.67e$-$18$ \\
785 ecology2 & $2.549s$ & $0.288s$ & $8.83$ & $21$ & $4.88e$-$13$ & $2.08e$-$14$ \\
787 finan512 & $2.660s$ & $0.377s$ & $7.05$ & $17$ & $3.22e$-$12$ & $8.82e$-$14$ \\
789 G3\_circuit & $3.139s$ & $0.480s$ & $6.53$ & $22$ & $1.04e$-$12$ & $5.00e$-$15$ \\
791 shallow\_water2 & $2.195s$ & $0.253s$ & $8.68$ & $17$ & $5.54e$-$21$ & $7.92e$-$24$ \\
793 thermal2 & $3.206s$ & $0.463s$ & $6.93$ & $21$ & $8.89e$-$12$ & $3.33e$-$16$ \\ \hline \hline
795 cage13 & $5.560s$ & $0.663s$ & $8.39$ & $26$ & $3.29e$-$11$ & $1.59e$-$14$ \\
797 crashbasis & $25.802s$ & $3.511s$ & $7.35$ & $135$ & $6.81e$-$11$ & $4.61e$-$15$ \\
799 FEM\_3D\_thermal2 & $13.281s$ & $1.572s$ & $8.45$ & $64$ & $3.88e$-$09$ & $1.82e$-$12$ \\
801 language & $12.553s$ & $1.760s$ & $7.13$ & $89$ & $2.11e$-$10$ & $1.60e$-$10$ \\
803 poli\_large & $8.515s$ & $1.053s$ & $8.09$ & $69$ & $5.05e$-$11$ & $6.59e$-$12$ \\
805 torso3 & $31.463s$ & $3.681s$ & $8.55$ & $175$ & $2.69e$-$10$ & $2.66e$-$14$ \\ \hline
808 \caption{Performances of the parallel GMRES method for solving linear systems associated to sparse banded matrices on a cluster of 24 CPU cores vs.
809 on a cluster of 12 GPUs.}
814 %%--------------------------%%
816 %%--------------------------%%
819 In this chapter, we have aimed at harnessing the computing power of a
820 cluster of GPUs for solving large sparse linear systems. For this, we
821 have used two Krylov subspace iterative methods: the CG and GMRES methods.
822 The first method is well known for its efficiency to solve symmetric
823 linear systems and the second one is used, particularly, to solve
824 nonsymmetric linear systems.
826 We have presented the parallel implementation of both iterative methods
827 on a GPU cluster. Particularly, the operations dealing with the vectors
828 and/or matrices, of these methods, are parallelized between the different
829 GPU computing nodes of the cluster. Indeed, the data-parallel vector operations
830 are accelerated by GPUs, and the communications required to synchronize the
831 parallel computations are carried out by CPU cores. For this, we have used
832 heterogeneous CUDA/MPI programming to implement the parallel iterative
835 In the experimental tests, we have shown that using a GPU cluster is efficient
836 for solving linear systems associated to very large sparse matrices. The experimental
837 results, discussed in the present chapter, show that a cluster of $12$ GPUs is
838 about $7$ times faster than a cluster of $24$ CPU cores for solving large sparse
839 linear systems of $25$ million unknown values. This is due to the GPUs ability to
840 compute the data-parallel operations faster than the CPUs.
842 In our future works, we plan to test the parallel algorithms of CG and~GMRES methods, adapted
843 to GPUs, for solving large linear systems associated to sparse matrices of different structures.
844 For example, the matrices having large bandwidths can lead to many data dependencies
845 between the computing nodes and, thus, degrade the performances of both algorithms. So in
846 this case, it would be interesting to study the different data partitioning techniques, in
847 order to minimize the dependencies between the computing nodes and thus to reduce the total
848 communication volume. This may improve the performances of both algorithms implemented on
849 a GPU cluster. Moreover, in the recent GPU hardware and software architectures, the GPU-Direct
850 system with CUDA version 5.0 is used so that two GPUs located on the same node or on distant
851 nodes can communicate between each other directly without CPUs. This allows us to improve the data
852 transfers between GPUs.
856 \putbib[Chapters/chapter12/biblio12]