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47 \title{Simulation of Asynchronous Iterative Numerical Algorithms Using SimGrid}
51 Charles Emile Ramamonjisoa\IEEEauthorrefmark{1},
52 David Laiymani\IEEEauthorrefmark{1},
53 Arnaud Giersch\IEEEauthorrefmark{1},
54 Lilia Ziane Khodja\IEEEauthorrefmark{2} and
55 Raphaël Couturier\IEEEauthorrefmark{1}
57 \IEEEauthorblockA{\IEEEauthorrefmark{1}%
58 Femto-ST Institute -- DISC Department\\
59 Université de Franche-Comté,
60 IUT de Belfort-Montbéliard\\
61 19 avenue du Maréchal Juin, BP 527, 90016 Belfort cedex, France\\
62 Email: \email{{charles.ramamonjisoa,david.laiymani,arnaud.giersch,raphael.couturier}@univ-fcomte.fr}
64 \IEEEauthorblockA{\IEEEauthorrefmark{2}%
65 Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest\\
66 200 avenue de la Vieille Tour, 33405 Talence cedex, France \\
67 Email: \email{lilia.ziane@inria.fr}
73 \RC{Ordre des auteurs pas définitif.}
75 \AG{L'abstract est AMHA incompréhensible et ne donne pas envie de lire la suite.}
76 In recent years, the scalability of large-scale implementation in a
77 distributed environment of algorithms becoming more and more complex has
78 always been hampered by the limits of physical computing resources
79 capacity. One solution is to run the program in a virtual environment
80 simulating a real interconnected computers architecture. The results are
81 convincing and useful solutions are obtained with far fewer resources
82 than in a real platform. However, challenges remain for the convergence
83 and efficiency of a class of algorithms that concern us here, namely
84 numerical parallel iterative algorithms executed in asynchronous mode,
85 especially in a large scale level. Actually, such algorithm requires a
86 balance and a compromise between computation and communication time
87 during the execution. Two important factors determine the success of the
88 experimentation: the convergence of the iterative algorithm on a large
89 scale and the execution time reduction in asynchronous mode. Once again,
90 from the current work, a simulated environment like SimGrid provides
91 accurate results which are difficult or even impossible to obtain in a
92 physical platform by exploiting the flexibility of the simulator on the
93 computing units clusters and the network structure design. Our
94 experimental outputs showed a saving of up to \np[\%]{40} for the algorithm
95 execution time in asynchronous mode compared to the synchronous one with
96 a residual precision up to \np{E-11}. Such successful results open
97 perspectives on experimentations for running the algorithm on a
98 simulated large scale growing environment and with larger problem size.
100 % no keywords for IEEE conferences
101 % Keywords: Algorithm distributed iterative asynchronous simulation SimGrid
104 \section{Introduction}
106 Parallel computing and high performance computing (HPC) are becoming more and more imperative for solving various
107 problems raised by researchers on various scientific disciplines but also by industrial in the field. Indeed, the
108 increasing complexity of these requested applications combined with a continuous increase of their sizes lead to write
109 distributed and parallel algorithms requiring significant hardware resources (grid computing, clusters, broadband
110 network, etc.) but also a non-negligible CPU execution time. We consider in this paper a class of highly efficient
111 parallel algorithms called \emph{numerical iterative algorithms} executed in a distributed environment. As their name
112 suggests, these algorithms solve a given problem by successive iterations ($X_{n +1} = f(X_{n})$) from an initial value
113 $X_{0}$ to find an approximate value $X^*$ of the solution with a very low residual error. Several well-known methods
114 demonstrate the convergence of these algorithms~\cite{BT89,Bahi07}.
116 Parallelization of such algorithms generally involve the division of the problem into several \emph{blocks} that will
117 be solved in parallel on multiple processing units. The latter will communicate each intermediate results before a new
118 iteration starts and until the approximate solution is reached. These parallel computations can be performed either in
119 \emph{synchronous} mode where a new iteration begins only when all nodes communications are completed,
120 or in \emph{asynchronous} mode where processors can continue independently with few or no synchronization points. For
121 instance in the \textit{Asynchronous Iterations~-- Asynchronous Communications (AIAC)} model~\cite{bcvc06:ij}, local
122 computations do not need to wait for required data. Processors can then perform their iterations with the data present
123 at that time. Even if the number of iterations required before the convergence is generally greater than for the
124 synchronous case, AIAC algorithms can significantly reduce overall execution times by suppressing idle times due to
125 synchronizations especially in a grid computing context (see~\cite{Bahi07} for more details).
127 Parallel numerical applications (synchronous or asynchronous) may have different
128 configuration and deployment requirements. Quantifying their resource
129 allocation policies and application scheduling algorithms in grid computing
130 environments under varying load, CPU power and network speeds is very costly,
131 very labor intensive and very time
132 consuming~\cite{Calheiros:2011:CTM:1951445.1951450}. The case of AIAC
133 algorithms is even more problematic since they are very sensible to the
134 execution environment context. For instance, variations in the network bandwidth
135 (intra and inter-clusters), in the number and the power of nodes, in the number
136 of clusters\dots{} can lead to very different number of iterations and so to
137 very different execution times. Then, it appears that the use of simulation
138 tools to explore various platform scenarios and to run large numbers of
139 experiments quickly can be very promising. In this way, the use of a simulation
140 environment to execute parallel iterative algorithms found some interests in
141 reducing the highly cost of access to computing resources: (1) for the
142 applications development life cycle and in code debugging (2) and in production
143 to get results in a reasonable execution time with a simulated infrastructure
144 not accessible with physical resources. Indeed, the launch of distributed
145 iterative asynchronous algorithms to solve a given problem on a large-scale
146 simulated environment challenges to find optimal configurations giving the best
147 results with a lowest residual error and in the best of execution time.
149 To our knowledge, there is no existing work on the large-scale simulation of a
150 real AIAC application. The aim of this paper is twofold. First we give a first
151 approach of the simulation of AIAC algorithms using a simulation tool (i.e. the
152 SimGrid toolkit~\cite{SimGrid}). Second, we confirm the effectiveness of
153 asynchronous mode algorithms by comparing their performance with the synchronous
154 mode. More precisely, we had implemented a program for solving large
155 linear system of equations by numerical method GMRES (Generalized
156 Minimal Residual) \cite{ref1}. We show, that with minor modifications of the
157 initial MPI code, the SimGrid toolkit allows us to perform a test campaign of a
158 real AIAC application on different computing architectures. The simulated
159 results we obtained are in line with real results exposed in ??\AG[]{ref?}.
160 SimGrid had allowed us to launch the application from a modest computing
161 infrastructure by simulating different distributed architectures composed by
162 clusters nodes interconnected by variable speed networks. With selected
163 parameters on the network platforms (bandwidth, latency of inter cluster
164 network) and on the clusters architecture (number, capacity calculation power)
165 in the simulated environment, the experimental results have demonstrated not
166 only the algorithm convergence within a reasonable time compared with the
167 physical environment performance, but also a time saving of up to \np[\%]{40} in
169 \AG{Il faudrait revoir la phrase précédente (couper en deux?). Là, on peut
170 avoir l'impression que le gain de \np[\%]{40} est entre une exécution réelle
171 et une exécution simulée!}
173 This article is structured as follows: after this introduction, the next section will give a brief description of
174 iterative asynchronous model. Then, the simulation framework SimGrid is presented with the settings to create various
175 distributed architectures. The algorithm of the multisplitting method used by GMRES written with MPI primitives and
176 its adaptation to SimGrid with SMPI (Simulated MPI) is detailed in the next section. At last, the experiments results
177 carried out will be presented before some concluding remarks and future works.
179 \section{Motivations and scientific context}
181 As exposed in the introduction, parallel iterative methods are now widely used in many scientific domains. They can be
182 classified in three main classes depending on how iterations and communications are managed (for more details readers
183 can refer to~\cite{bcvc06:ij}). In the \textit{Synchronous Iterations~-- Synchronous Communications (SISC)} model data
184 are exchanged at the end of each iteration. All the processors must begin the same iteration at the same time and
185 important idle times on processors are generated. The \textit{Synchronous Iterations~-- Asynchronous Communications
186 (SIAC)} model can be compared to the previous one except that data required on another processor are sent asynchronously
187 i.e. without stopping current computations. This technique allows to partially overlap communications by computations
188 but unfortunately, the overlapping is only partial and important idle times remain. It is clear that, in a grid
189 computing context, where the number of computational nodes is large, heterogeneous and widely distributed, the idle
190 times generated by synchronizations are very penalizing. One way to overcome this problem is to use the
191 \textit{Asynchronous Iterations~-- Asynchronous Communications (AIAC)} model. Here, local computations do not need to
192 wait for required data. Processors can then perform their iterations with the data present at that time. Figure~\ref{fig:aiac}
193 illustrates this model where the gray blocks represent the computation phases, the white spaces the idle
194 times and the arrows the communications.
195 \AG{There are no ``white spaces'' on the figure.}
196 With this algorithmic model, the number of iterations required before the
197 convergence is generally greater than for the two former classes. But, and as detailed in~\cite{bcvc06:ij}, AIAC
198 algorithms can significantly reduce overall execution times by suppressing idle times due to synchronizations especially
199 in a grid computing context.
203 \includegraphics[width=8cm]{AIAC.pdf}
204 \caption{The Asynchronous Iterations~-- Asynchronous Communications model}
209 It is very challenging to develop efficient applications for large scale,
210 heterogeneous and distributed platforms such as computing grids. Researchers and
211 engineers have to develop techniques for maximizing application performance of
212 these multi-cluster platforms, by redesigning the applications and/or by using
213 novel algorithms that can account for the composite and heterogeneous nature of
214 the platform. Unfortunately, the deployment of such applications on these very
215 large scale systems is very costly, labor intensive and time consuming. In this
216 context, it appears that the use of simulation tools to explore various platform
217 scenarios at will and to run enormous numbers of experiments quickly can be very
218 promising. Several works\dots{}
220 \AG{Several works\dots{} what?\\
221 Le paragraphe suivant se trouve déjà dans l'intro ?}
222 In the context of AIAC algorithms, the use of simulation tools is even more
223 relevant. Indeed, this class of applications is very sensible to the execution
224 environment context. For instance, variations in the network bandwidth (intra
225 and inter-clusters), in the number and the power of nodes, in the number of
226 clusters\dots{} can lead to very different number of iterations and so to very
227 different execution times.
234 SimGrid~\cite{SimGrid,casanova+legrand+quinson.2008.simgrid} is a simulation
235 framework to study the behavior of large-scale distributed systems. As its name
236 says, it emanates from the grid computing community, but is nowadays used to
237 study grids, clouds, HPC or peer-to-peer systems. The early versions of SimGrid
238 date from 1999, but it's still actively developed and distributed as an open
239 source software. Today, it's one of the major generic tools in the field of
240 simulation for large-scale distributed systems.
242 SimGrid provides several programming interfaces: MSG to simulate Concurrent
243 Sequential Processes, SimDAG to simulate DAGs of (parallel) tasks, and SMPI to
244 run real applications written in MPI~\cite{MPI}. Apart from the native C
245 interface, SimGrid provides bindings for the C++, Java, Lua and Ruby programming
246 languages. SMPI is the interface that has been used for the work exposed in
247 this paper. The SMPI interface implements about \np[\%]{80} of the MPI 2.0
248 standard~\cite{bedaride:hal-00919507}, and supports applications written in C or
249 Fortran, with little or no modifications.
251 With SimGrid, the execution of a distributed application is simulated on a
252 single machine. The application code is really executed, but some operations
253 like the communications are intercepted to be simulated according to the
254 characteristics of the simulated execution platform. The description of this
255 target platform is given as an input for the execution, by the mean of an XML
256 file. It describes the properties of the platform, such as the computing node
257 with their computing power, the interconnection links with their bandwidth and
258 latency, and the routing strategy. The simulated running time of the
259 application is computed according to these properties.
261 %%% TODO: add some words+refs about SimGrid's accuracy and scalability.}
263 \AG{Faut-il ajouter quelque-chose ?}
264 \CER{Comme tu as décrit la plateforme d'exécution, on peut ajouter éventuellement le fichier XML contenant des hosts dans les clusters formant la grille
267 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
268 \section{Simulation of the multisplitting method}
269 %Décrire le problème (algo) traité ainsi que le processus d'adaptation à SimGrid.
270 Let $Ax=b$ be a large sparse system of $n$ linear equations in $\mathbb{R}$, where $A$ is a sparse square and nonsingular matrix, $x$ is the solution vector and $b$ is the right-hand side vector. We use a multisplitting method based on the block Jacobi splitting to solve this linear system on a large scale platform composed of $L$ clusters of processors~\cite{o1985multi}. In this case, we apply a row-by-row splitting without overlapping
272 \left(\begin{array}{ccc}
273 A_{11} & \cdots & A_{1L} \\
274 \vdots & \ddots & \vdots\\
275 A_{L1} & \cdots & A_{LL}
278 \left(\begin{array}{c}
284 \left(\begin{array}{c}
290 in such a way that successive rows of matrix $A$ and both vectors $x$ and $b$ are assigned to one cluster, where for all $l,m\in\{1,\ldots,L\}$ $A_{lm}$ is a rectangular block of $A$ of size $n_l\times n_m$, $X_l$ and $B_l$ are sub-vectors of $x$ and $b$, respectively, of size $n_l$ each and $\sum_{l} n_l=\sum_{m} n_m=n$.
292 The multisplitting method proceeds by iteration to solve in parallel the linear system on $L$ clusters of processors, in such a way each sub-system
297 A_{ll}X_l = Y_l \text{, such that}\\
298 Y_l = B_l - \displaystyle\sum_{\substack{m=1\\ m\neq l}}^{L}A_{lm}X_m
302 is solved independently by a cluster and communications are required to update the right-hand side sub-vector $Y_l$, such that the sub-vectors $X_m$ represent the data dependencies between the clusters. As each sub-system (\ref{eq:4.1}) is solved in parallel by a cluster of processors, our multisplitting method uses an iterative method as an inner solver which is easier to parallelize and more scalable than a direct method. In this work, we use the parallel algorithm of GMRES method~\cite{ref1} which is one of the most used iterative method by many researchers.
305 %%% IEEE instructions forbid to use an algorithm environment here, use figure
307 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
308 \Input $A_l$ (sparse sub-matrix), $B_l$ (right-hand side sub-vector)
309 \Output $X_l$ (solution sub-vector)\vspace{0.2cm}
310 \State Load $A_l$, $B_l$
311 \State Set the initial guess $x^0$
312 \For {$k=0,1,2,\ldots$ until the global convergence}
313 \State Restart outer iteration with $x^0=x^k$
314 \State Inner iteration: \Call{InnerSolver}{$x^0$, $k+1$}
315 \State\label{algo:01:send} Send shared elements of $X_l^{k+1}$ to neighboring clusters
316 \State\label{algo:01:recv} Receive shared elements in $\{X_m^{k+1}\}_{m\neq l}$
321 \Function {InnerSolver}{$x^0$, $k$}
322 \State Compute local right-hand side $Y_l$:
324 Y_l = B_l - \sum\nolimits^L_{\substack{m=1\\ m\neq l}}A_{lm}X_m^0
326 \State Solving sub-system $A_{ll}X_l^k=Y_l$ with the parallel GMRES method
327 \State \Return $X_l^k$
330 \caption{A multisplitting solver with GMRES method}
334 Algorithm on Figure~\ref{algo:01} shows the main key points of the multisplitting method to solve a large sparse linear system. This algorithm is based on an outer-inner iteration method where the parallel synchronous GMRES method is used to solve the inner iteration. It is executed in parallel by each cluster of processors. For all $l,m\in\{1,\ldots,L\}$, the matrices and vectors with the subscript $l$ represent the local data for cluster $l$, while $\{A_{lm}\}_{m\neq l}$ are off-diagonal matrices of sparse matrix $A$ and $\{X_m\}_{m\neq l}$ contain vector elements of solution $x$ shared with neighboring clusters. At every outer iteration $k$, asynchronous communications are performed between processors of the local cluster and those of distant clusters (lines~\ref{algo:01:send} and~\ref{algo:01:recv} in Figure~\ref{algo:01}). The shared vector elements of the solution $x$ are exchanged by message passing using MPI non-blocking communication routines.
338 \includegraphics[width=60mm,keepaspectratio]{clustering}
339 \caption{Example of three clusters of processors interconnected by a virtual unidirectional ring network.}
343 The global convergence of the asynchronous multisplitting solver is detected
344 when the clusters of processors have all converged locally. We implemented the
345 global convergence detection process as follows. On each cluster a master
346 processor is designated (for example the processor with rank 1) and masters of
347 all clusters are interconnected by a virtual unidirectional ring network (see
348 Figure~\ref{fig:4.1}). During the resolution, a Boolean token circulates around
349 the virtual ring from a master processor to another until the global convergence
350 is achieved. So starting from the cluster with rank 1, each master processor $i$
351 sets the token to \textit{True} if the local convergence is achieved or to
352 \textit{False} otherwise, and sends it to master processor $i+1$. Finally, the
353 global convergence is detected when the master of cluster 1 receives from the
354 master of cluster $L$ a token set to \textit{True}. In this case, the master of
355 cluster 1 broadcasts a stop message to masters of other clusters. In this work,
356 the local convergence on each cluster $l$ is detected when the following
357 condition is satisfied
359 (k\leq \MI) \text{ or } (\|X_l^k - X_l^{k+1}\|_{\infty}\leq\epsilon)
361 where $\MI$ is the maximum number of outer iterations and $\epsilon$ is the
362 tolerance threshold of the error computed between two successive local solution
363 $X_l^k$ and $X_l^{k+1}$.
365 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
366 We did not encounter major blocking problems when adapting the multisplitting algorithm previously described to a simulation environment like SimGrid unless some code
367 debugging. Indeed, apart from the review of the program sequence for asynchronous exchanges between processors within a cluster or between clusters, the algorithm was executed successfully with SMPI and provided identical outputs as those obtained with direct execution under MPI. In synchronous
368 mode, the execution of the program raised no particular issue but in asynchronous mode, the review of the sequence of MPI\_Isend, MPI\_Irecv and MPI\_Waitall instructions
369 and with the addition of the primitive MPI\_Test was needed to avoid a memory fault due to an infinite loop resulting from the non-convergence of the algorithm.
370 \CER{On voulait en fait montrer la simplicité de l'adaptation de l'algo a SimGrid. Les problèmes rencontrés décrits dans ce paragraphe concerne surtout le mode async}\LZK{OK. J'aurais préféré avoir un peu plus de détails sur l'adaptation de la version async}
371 Note here that the use of SMPI functions optimizer for memory footprint and CPU usage is not recommended knowing that one wants to get real results by simulation.
372 As mentioned, upon this adaptation, the algorithm is executed as in the real life in the simulated environment after the following minor changes. First, all declared
373 global variables have been moved to local variables for each subroutine. In fact, global variables generate side effects arising from the concurrent access of
374 shared memory used by threads simulating each computing unit in the SimGrid architecture. Second, the alignment of certain types of variables such as ``long int'' had
375 also to be reviewed. Finally, some compilation errors on MPI\_Waitall and MPI\_Finalize primitives have been fixed with the latest version of SimGrid.
376 In total, the initial MPI program running on the simulation environment SMPI gave after a very simple adaptation the same results as those obtained in a real
377 environment. We have successfully executed the code in synchronous mode using GMRES algorithm compared with a multisplitting method in asynchrnous mode after few modification.
380 \section{Experimental results}
382 When the \textit{real} application runs in the simulation environment and produces the expected results, varying the input
383 parameters and the program arguments allows us to compare outputs from the code execution. We have noticed from this
384 study that the results depend on the following parameters:
386 \item At the network level, we found that the most critical values are the
387 bandwidth (bw) and the network latency (lat).
388 \item Hosts power (GFlops) can also influence on the results.
389 \item Finally, when submitting job batches for execution, the arguments values
390 passed to the program like the maximum number of iterations or the
391 \textit{external} precision are critical. They allow to ensure not only the
392 convergence of the algorithm but also to get the main objective of the
393 experimentation of the simulation in having an execution time in asynchronous
394 less than in synchronous mode. The ratio between the execution time of asynchronous compared to the synchronous mode is defined as the "relative gain". So, our objective running the algorithm in SimGrid is to obtain a relative gain greater than 1.
396 \LZK{Propositions pour remplacer le terme ``speedup'': acceleration ratio ou relative gain}
397 \CER{C'est fait. En conséquence, les tableaux et les commentaires ont été aussi modifiés}
398 A priori, obtaining a relative gain greater than 1 would be difficult in a local area
399 network configuration where the synchronous mode will take advantage on the
400 rapid exchange of information on such high-speed links. Thus, the methodology
401 adopted was to launch the application on clustered network. In this last
402 configuration, degrading the inter-cluster network performance will
403 \textit{penalize} the synchronous mode allowing to get a relative gain greater than 1.
404 This action simulates the case of distant clusters linked with long distance network
407 In this paper, we solve the 3D Poisson problem whose the mathematical model is
411 \nabla^2 u = f \text{~in~} \Omega \\
412 u =0 \text{~on~} \Gamma =\partial\Omega
417 where $\nabla^2$ is the Laplace operator, $f$ and $u$ are real-valued functions, and $\Omega=[0,1]^3$. The spatial discretization with a finite difference scheme reduces problem~(\ref{eq:02}) to a system of sparse linear equations. The general iteration scheme of our multisplitting method in a 3D domain using a seven point stencil could be written as
420 u^{k+1}(x,y,z)= & u^k(x,y,z) - \frac{1}{6}\times\\
421 & (u^k(x-1,y,z) + u^k(x+1,y,z) + \\
422 & u^k(x,y-1,z) + u^k(x,y+1,z) + \\
423 & u^k(x,y,z-1) + u^k(x,y,z+1)),
427 where the iteration matrix $A$ of size $N_x\times N_y\times N_z$ of the discretized linear system is sparse, symmetric and positive definite.
429 The parallel solving of the 3D Poisson problem with our multisplitting method requires a data partitioning of the problem between clusters and between processors within a cluster. We have chosen the 3D partitioning instead of the row-by-row partitioning in order to reduce the data exchanges at sub-domain boundaries. Figure~\ref{fig:4.2} shows an example of the data partitioning of the 3D Poisson problem between two clusters of processors, where each sub-problem is assigned to a processor. In this context, a processor has at most six neighbors within a cluster or in distant clusters with which it shares data at sub-domain boundaries.
433 \includegraphics[width=80mm,keepaspectratio]{partition}
434 \caption{Example of the 3D data partitioning between two clusters of processors.}
439 As a first step, the algorithm was run on a network consisting of two clusters
440 containing 50 hosts each, totaling 100 hosts. Various combinations of the above
441 factors have providing the results shown in Table~\ref{tab.cluster.2x50} with a
442 matrix size ranging from $N_x = N_y = N_z = \text{62}$ to 171 elements or from
443 $\text{62}^\text{3} = \text{\np{238328}}$ to $\text{171}^\text{3} =
444 \text{\np{5211000}}$ entries.
446 % use the same column width for the following three tables
447 \newlength{\mytablew}\settowidth{\mytablew}{\footnotesize\np{E-11}}
448 \newenvironment{mytable}[1]{% #1: number of columns for data
449 \renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.3}%
450 \begin{tabular}{|>{\bfseries}r%
451 |*{#1}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\mytablew}|}}}{%
456 \caption{2 clusters, each with 50 nodes}
457 \label{tab.cluster.2x50}
462 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 50 \\
465 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 \\
468 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1.5 & 1.5 & 1.5 \\
471 & 62 & 62 & 62 & 100 & 100 & 110 \\
474 & \np{E-5} & \np{E-8} & \np{E-9} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} \\
477 & 2.52 & 2.55 & 2.52 & 2.57 & 2.54 & 2.53 \\
486 & 50 & 50 & 50 & 50 & 10 & 10 \\
489 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.03 & 0.01 \\
492 & 1.5 & 1.5 & 1.5 & 1.5 & 1 & 1.5 \\
495 & 120 & 130 & 140 & 150 & 171 & 171 \\
498 & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-5} & \np{E-5} \\
501 & 2.51 & 2.58 & 2.55 & 2.54 & 1.59 & 1.29 \\
506 Then we have changed the network configuration using three clusters containing
507 respectively 33, 33 and 34 hosts, or again by on hundred hosts for all the
508 clusters. In the same way as above, a judicious choice of key parameters has
509 permitted to get the results in Table~\ref{tab.cluster.3x33} which shows the
510 relative gains greater than 1 with a matrix size from 62 to 100 elements.
514 \caption{3 clusters, each with 33 nodes}
515 \label{tab.cluster.3x33}
520 & 10 & 5 & 4 & 3 & 2 & 6 \\
523 & 0.01 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 & 0.02 \\
526 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1 \\
529 & 62 & 100 & 100 & 100 & 100 & 171 \\
532 & \np{E-5} & \np{E-5} & \np{E-5} & \np{E-5} & \np{E-5} & \np{E-5} \\
535 & 1.003 & 1,01 & 1,08 & 0.19 & 1.28 & 1.01 \\
540 In a final step, results of an execution attempt to scale up the three clustered
541 configuration but increasing by two hundreds hosts has been recorded in
542 Table~\ref{tab.cluster.3x67}.
546 \caption{3 clusters, each with 66 nodes}
547 \label{tab.cluster.3x67}
559 Prec/Eprec & \np{E-5} \\
561 Relative gain & 1.11 \\
566 Note that the program was run with the following parameters:
568 \paragraph*{SMPI parameters}
571 \item HOSTFILE: Hosts file description.
572 \item PLATFORM: file description of the platform architecture : clusters (CPU power,
573 \dots{}), intra cluster network description, inter cluster network (bandwidth bw,
574 lat latency, \dots{}).
578 \paragraph*{Arguments of the program}
581 \item Description of the cluster architecture;
582 \item Maximum number of internal and external iterations;
583 \item Internal and external precisions;
584 \item Matrix size $N_x$, $N_y$ and $N_z$;
586 \item Matrix diagonal value: \np{6.0};
587 \item Matrix Off-diagonal value: \np{-1.0};
589 %>>>>>>> 5fb6769d88c1720b6480a28521119ef010462fa6
590 \item Execution Mode: synchronous or asynchronous.
593 \paragraph*{Interpretations and comments}
595 After analyzing the outputs, generally, for the configuration with two or three
596 clusters including one hundred hosts (Tables~\ref{tab.cluster.2x50}
597 and~\ref{tab.cluster.3x33}), some combinations of the used parameters affecting
598 the results have given a relative gain more than 2.5, showing the effectiveness of the
599 asynchronous performance compared to the synchronous mode.
601 In the case of a two clusters configuration, Table~\ref{tab.cluster.2x50} shows
602 that with a deterioration of inter cluster network set with \np[Mbit/s]{5} of
603 bandwidth, a latency in order of a hundredth of a millisecond and a system power
604 of one GFlops, an efficiency of about \np[\%]{40} in asynchronous mode is
605 obtained for a matrix size of 62 elements. It is noticed that the result remains
606 stable even if we vary the external precision from \np{E-5} to \np{E-9}. By
607 increasing the matrix size up to 100 elements, it was necessary to increase the
608 CPU power of \np[\%]{50} to \np[GFlops]{1.5} for a convergence of the algorithm
609 with the same order of asynchronous mode efficiency. Maintaining such a system
610 power but this time, increasing network throughput inter cluster up to
611 \np[Mbit/s]{50}, the result of efficiency with a relative gain of 1.5 is obtained with
612 high external precision of \np{E-11} for a matrix size from 110 to 150 side
615 For the 3 clusters architecture including a total of 100 hosts,
616 Table~\ref{tab.cluster.3x33} shows that it was difficult to have a combination
617 which gives a relative gain of asynchronous mode more than 1.2. Indeed, for a
618 matrix size of 62 elements, equality between the performance of the two modes
619 (synchronous and asynchronous) is achieved with an inter cluster of
620 \np[Mbit/s]{10} and a latency of \np[ms]{E-1}. To challenge an efficiency greater than 1.2 with a matrix size of 100 points, it was necessary to degrade the
621 inter cluster network bandwidth from 5 to \np[Mbit/s]{2}.
623 A last attempt was made for a configuration of three clusters but more powerful
624 with 200 nodes in total. The convergence with a relative gain around 1.1 was
625 obtained with a bandwidth of \np[Mbit/s]{1} as shown in
626 Table~\ref{tab.cluster.3x67}.
628 \LZK{Dans le papier, on compare les deux versions synchrone et asycnhrone du multisplitting. Y a t il des résultats pour comparer gmres parallèle classique avec multisplitting asynchrone? Ca permettra de montrer l'intérêt du multisplitting asynchrone sur des clusters distants}
629 \CER{En fait, les résultats ont été obtenus en comparant les temps d'exécution entre l'algo classique GMRES en mode synchrone avec le multisplitting en mode asynchrone, le tout sur un environnement de clusters distants}
632 The experimental results on executing a parallel iterative algorithm in
633 asynchronous mode on an environment simulating a large scale of virtual
634 computers organized with interconnected clusters have been presented.
635 Our work has demonstrated that using such a simulation tool allow us to
636 reach the following three objectives:
639 \item To have a flexible configurable execution platform resolving the
640 hard exercise to access to very limited but so solicited physical
642 \item to ensure the algorithm convergence with a reasonable time and
644 \item and finally and more importantly, to find the correct combination
645 of the cluster and network specifications permitting to save time in
646 executing the algorithm in asynchronous mode.
648 Our results have shown that in certain conditions, asynchronous mode is
649 speeder up to \np[\%]{40} than executing the algorithm in synchronous mode
650 which is not negligible for solving complex practical problems with more
651 and more increasing size.
653 Several studies have already addressed the performance execution time of
654 this class of algorithm. The work presented in this paper has
655 demonstrated an original solution to optimize the use of a simulation
656 tool to run efficiently an iterative parallel algorithm in asynchronous
657 mode in a grid architecture.
659 \LZK{Perspectives???}
661 \section*{Acknowledgment}
663 This work is partially funded by the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
664 \todo[inline]{The authors would like to thank\dots{}}
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670 \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
671 \bibliography{IEEEabrv,hpccBib}
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