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26 \title{Dynamic Frequency Scaling for Energy Consumption Reduction in Distributed MPI Programs}
37 University of Franche-Comté\\
38 IUT de Belfort-Montbéliard, 19 avenue du Maréchal Juin, BP 527, 90016 Belfort cedex, France\\
39 % Fax : +33~3~84~58~77~32\\
40 Email: \email{{jean-claude.charr,raphael.couturier,ahmed.fanfakh_badri_muslim,arnaud.giersch}@univ-fcomte.fr}
47 Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS) can be applied to modern CPUs.
48 This technique is usually used to reduce the energy consumed by a CPU while
49 computing . Indeed, power consumption by a processor at a given instant is
50 exponentially related to its frequency. Thus, decreasing the frequency reduces
51 the power consumed by the CPU. However, it can also significantly affect the
52 performance of the executed program if it is compute bound and if a low CPU
53 frequency is selected. The performance degradation ratio can even be higher than
54 the saved energy ratio. Therefore, the chosen scaling factor must give the best possible trade-off
55 between energy reduction and performance.
57 In this paper we present an algorithm
58 that predicts the energy consumed with each frequency gear and selects the one that
59 gives the best ratio between energy consumption reduction and performance.
60 This algorithm works online without training or profiling and
61 has a very small overhead. It also takes into account synchronous communications between the nodes
62 that are executing the distributed algorithm. The algorithm has been evaluated over the SimGrid simulator
63 while being applied to the NAS parallel benchmark programs. The results of the experiments show that it outperforms other existing scaling factor selection algorithms.
66 \section{Introduction}
69 The need and demand for more computing power have been increasing since the birth of the first computing unit and it is not expected to slow
70 down in the coming years. To satisfy this demand, researchers and supercomputers
71 constructors have been regularly increasing the number of computing cores and processors in
72 supercomputers (for example in November 2013, according to the TOP500
73 list~\cite{43}, the Tianhe-2 was the fastest supercomputer. It has more than 3
74 millions of cores and delivers more than 33 Tflop/s while consuming 17808
75 kW). This large increase in number of computing cores has led to large energy
76 consumption by these architectures. Moreover, the price of energy is expected to
77 continue its ascent according to the demand. For all these reasons energy
78 reduction became an important topic in the high performance computing field. To
79 tackle this problem, many researchers used DVFS (Dynamic Voltage Frequency
80 Scaling) operations which reduce dynamically the frequency and voltage of cores
81 and thus their energy consumption. Indeed, modern CPUs offer a set of acceptable frequencies which are usually called gears, and the user or the operating system can modify the frequency of the processor according to its needs. However, DVFS also degrades the
82 performance of computation. Therefore researchers try to reduce the frequency to
83 minimum when processors are idle (waiting for data from other processors or
84 communicating with other processors). Moreover, depending on their objectives
85 they use heuristics to find the best scaling factor during the computation. If
86 they aim for performance they choose the best scaling factor that reduces the
87 consumed energy while affecting as little as possible the performance. On the
88 other hand, if they aim for energy reduction, the chosen scaling factor must
89 produce the most energy efficient execution without considering the degradation
90 of the performance. It is important to notice that lowering the frequency to
91 minimum value does not always give the most energy efficient execution due to energy
92 leakage. The best scaling factor might be chosen during execution (online) or
93 during a pre-execution phase. In this paper, we present an
94 algorithm that selects a frequency scaling factor that simultaneously takes into
95 consideration the energy consumption by the CPU and the performance of the application. The
96 main objective of HPC systems is to execute as fast as possible the application.
97 Therefore, our algorithm selects the scaling factor online with
98 very small footprint. The proposed algorithm takes into account the
99 communication times of the MPI program to choose the scaling factor. This
100 algorithm has ability to predict both energy consumption and execution time over
101 all available scaling factors. The prediction achieved depends on some
102 computing time information, gathered at the beginning of the runtime. We apply
103 this algorithm to seven MPI benchmarks. These MPI programs are the NAS parallel
104 benchmarks (NPB v3.3) developed by NASA~\cite{44}. Our experiments are executed
105 using the simulator SimGrid/SMPI v3.10~\cite{Casanova:2008:SGF:1397760.1398183}
106 over an homogeneous distributed memory architecture. Furthermore, we compare the
107 proposed algorithm with Rauber and Rünger methods~\cite{3}.
108 The comparison's results show that our algorithm gives better energy-time trade-off.
110 This paper is organized as follows: Section~\ref{sec.relwork} presents some related works
111 from other authors. Section~\ref{sec.exe} explains the execution of parallel
112 tasks and the sources of slack times. It also presents an energy
113 model for homogeneous platforms. Section~\ref{sec.mpip} describes how the performance
114 of MPI programs can be predicted . Section~\ref{sec.compet} presents the energy-performance
115 objective function that maximizes the reduction of energy consumption while minimizing the degradation of the program's performance. Section~\ref{sec.optim} details the proposed energy-performance algorithm. Section~\ref{sec.expe} verifies the accuracy of the performance prediction
116 model and presents the results of the proposed algorithm. It also shows the comparison results between our method and other existing methods. Finally,
117 we conclude in Section~\ref{sec.concl} with a summary and some future works.
118 \section{Related works}
121 \AG{Consider introducing the models (sec.~\ref{sec.exe}) before related works}
123 In this section, some heuristics to compute the scaling factor are
124 presented and classified into two categories: offline and online methods.
126 \subsection{Offline scaling factor selection methods}
128 The offline scaling factor selection methods are executed before the runtime of
129 the program. They return static scaling factor values to the processors
130 participating in the execution of the parallel program. On one hand, the scaling
132 values could be computed based on information retrieved by analyzing the code of
133 the program and the computing system that will execute it. In ~\cite{40},
135 al. detect during compilation the dependency points between
136 tasks in a parallel program. This information is then used to lower the frequency of
137 some processors in order to eliminate slack times. A slack time is the period of time during which a processor that have already finished its computation, have to wait
138 for a set of processors to finish their computations and send their results to the
139 waiting processor in order to continue its task that is
140 dependent on the results of computations being executed on other processors.
141 Freeh et al. showed in ~\cite{17} that the
142 communication times of MPI programs do not change when the frequency is scaled down.
143 On the other hand, some offline scaling factor selection methods use the
144 information gathered from previous full or
145 partial executions of the program. A part or the whole program is usually executed over all the available frequency gears and the the execution time and the energy consumed with each frequency gear are measured. Then an heuristic or an exact method uses the retrieved information to compute the values of the scaling factor for the processors.
146 In~\cite{29}, Xie et al. use an exact exponential breadth-first search algorithm to compute the scaling factor values that give the optimal energy reduction while respecting a deadline for a sequential program. They also present a linear heuristic that approximates the optimal solution. In~\cite{8} , Rountree et al. use a linear programming
147 algorithm, while in~\cite{38,34}, Cochran et al. use multi logistic regression algorithm for the same goal.
148 The main drawback for these methods is that they all require executing a part or the whole program on all frequency gears for each new instance of the same program.
150 \subsection{Online scaling factor selection methods}
151 The online scaling factor selection methods are executed during the runtime of the program. They are usually integrated into iterative programs where the same block of instructions is executed many times. During the first few iterations, many informations are measured such as the execution time, the energy consumed using a multimeter, the slack times, ... Then a method will exploit these measurements to compute the scaling factor values for each processor. This operation, measurements and computing new scaling factor, can be repeated as much as needed if the iterations are not regular. Kimura, Peraza, Yu-Liang et al. ~\cite{11,2,31} used learning methods to select the appropriate scaling factor values to eliminate the slack times during runtime. However, as seen in ~\cite{39,19}, machine learning methods can take a lot of time to converge when the number of available gears is big. To reduce the impact of slack times, in~\cite{1}, Lim et al. developed an algorithm that detects the
152 communication sections and changes the frequency during these sections
153 only. This approach might change the frequency of each processor many times per iteration if an iteration
154 contains more than one communication section. In ~\cite{3}, Rauber and Rünger used an analytical model that can predict the consumed energy and the execution time for every frequency gear after measuring the consumed energy and the execution time with the highest frequency gear. These predictions may be used to choose the optimal gear for each processor executing the parallel program to reduce energy consumption.
155 To maintain the performance of the parallel program , they
156 set the processor with the biggest load to the highest gear and then compute the scaling factor values for the rest of the processors. Although this model was built for parallel architectures, it can be adapted to distributed architectures by taking into account the communications.
157 The primary contribution of our paper is presenting a new online scaling factor selection method which has the following characteristics :
159 \item It is based on Rauber and Rünger analytical model to predict the energy consumption and the execution time of the application with different frequency gears.
160 \item It selects the frequency scaling factor for simultaneously optimizing energy reduction and maintaining performance.
161 \item It is well adapted to distributed architectures because it takes into account the communication time.
162 \item It is well adapted to distributed applications with imbalanced tasks.
163 \item it has very small footprint when compared to other
164 methods (e.g.,~\cite{19}) and does not require profiling or training as
169 \section{Execution and energy of parallel tasks on homogeneous platform}
171 %\JC{The whole subsection ``Parallel Tasks Execution on Homogeneous Platform'', can be deleted if we need space, we can just say we are interested in this paper in homogeneous clusters}
172 \subsection{Parallel tasks execution on homogeneous platform}
173 A homogeneous cluster consists of identical nodes in terms of hardware and software.
174 Each node has its own memory and at least one processor which can
175 be a multi-core. The nodes are connected via a high bandwidth network. Tasks
176 executed on this model can be either synchronous or asynchronous. In this paper
177 we consider execution of the synchronous tasks on distributed homogeneous
178 platform. These tasks can exchange the data via synchronous message passing.
181 \subfloat[Sync. imbalanced communications]{\includegraphics[scale=0.67]{fig/commtasks}\label{fig:h1}}
182 \subfloat[Sync. imbalanced computations]{\includegraphics[scale=0.67]{fig/compt}\label{fig:h2}}
183 \caption{Parallel tasks on homogeneous platform}
186 Therefore, the execution time of a task consists of the computation time and the
187 communication time. Moreover, the synchronous communications between tasks can
188 lead to slack times while tasks wait at the synchronization barrier for other tasks to
189 finish their tasks (see figure~(\ref{fig:h1})). The imbalanced communications
190 happen when nodes have to send/receive different amount of data or they communicate
191 with different number of nodes. Another source of slack times is the imbalanced computations.
192 This happens when processing different amounts of data on each processor (see figure~(\ref{fig:h2})).
193 In this case the fastest tasks have to wait at the synchronization barrier for the
194 slowest ones to begin the next task. In both cases the overall execution time
195 of the program is the execution time of the slowest task as in EQ~(\ref{eq:T1}).
198 \textit{Program Time} = \max_{i=1,2,\dots,N} T_i
200 where $T_i$ is the execution time of task $i$ and all the tasks are executed concurrently on different processors.
202 \subsection{Energy model for homogeneous platform}
204 Many researchers~\cite{9,3,15,26} divide the power consumed by a processor to two power metrics: the
205 static and the dynamic power. While the first one is consumed as long as the computing unit is on, the latter is only consumed during computation times. The dynamic power
206 $P_{dyn}$ is related to the switching activity $\alpha$, load capacitance $C_L$,
207 the supply voltage $V$ and operational frequency $f$, as shown in EQ~(\ref{eq:pd}).
210 P_\textit{dyn} = \alpha \cdot C_L \cdot V^2 \cdot f
212 The static power $P_{static}$ captures the leakage power as follows:
215 P_\textit{static} = V \cdot N_{trans} \cdot K_{design} \cdot I_{leak}
217 where V is the supply voltage, $N_{trans}$ is the number of transistors, $K_{design}$ is a
218 design dependent parameter and $I_{leak}$ is a technology-dependent
219 parameter. The energy consumed by an individual processor to execute a given program can be computed as:
222 E_\textit{ind} = P_\textit{dyn} \cdot T_{Comp} + P_\textit{static} \cdot T
224 where $T$ is the execution time of the program, $T_{Comp}$ is the computation time and $T_{Comp} \le T$. $T_{Comp}$ may be equal to $T$ if there is no communications, no slack times and no synchronizations.
226 DVFS is a process that is allowed in
227 modern processors to reduce the dynamic power by scaling down the voltage and
228 frequency. Its main objective is to reduce the overall energy
229 consumption~\cite{37}. The operational frequency \emph f depends linearly on the
230 supply voltage $V$, i.e., $V = \beta \cdot f$ with some constant $\beta$. This
231 equation is used to study the change of the dynamic voltage with respect to
232 various frequency values in~\cite{3}. The reduction process of the frequency can be
233 expressed by the scaling factor \emph S which is the ratio between the
234 maximum and the new frequency as in EQ~(\ref{eq:s}).
237 S = \frac{F_\textit{max}}{F_\textit{new}}
239 The value of the scaling factor $S$ is greater than 1 when changing the frequency of the CPU to any
240 new frequency value~(\emph {P-state}) in the governor. The CPU governor is an
241 interface driver supplied by the operating system's kernel to
242 lower a core's frequency. This factor reduces
243 quadratically the dynamic power which may cause degradation in performance and thus, the increase of the static energy because the execution time is increased~\cite{36}. If the tasks are sorted according to their execution times before scaling in a descending order, the total energy consumption model for a parallel
244 homogeneous platform, as presented by Rauber and Rünger~\cite{3}, can be written as a function of the scaling factor \emph S, as in EQ~(\ref{eq:energy}).
248 E = P_\textit{dyn} \cdot S_1^{-2} \cdot
249 \left( T_1 + \sum_{i=2}^{N} \frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2} \right) +
250 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot S_1 \cdot N
253 where \emph N is the number of parallel nodes, $T_i \ and \ S_i \ for \ i=1,...,N$ are the execution times and scaling factors of the sorted tasks. Therefore, $T1$ is the time of the slowest task, and $S_1$ its scaling factor which should be the highest because they are proportional to
254 the time values $T_i$. The scaling factors are computed as in EQ~(\ref{eq:si}).
257 S_i = S \cdot \frac{T_1}{T_i}
258 = \frac{F_\textit{max}}{F_\textit{new}} \cdot \frac{T_1}{T_i}
260 In this paper we depend on
261 Rauber and Rünger energy model EQ~(\ref{eq:energy}) for two reasons: (1) this
262 model is used for any number of concurrent tasks, and (2) we
263 compare our algorithm with Rauber and Rünger scaling factor selection method which is based on
264 EQ~(\ref{eq:energy}). The optimal scaling factor is computed by minimizing the derivation for this equation which produces EQ~(\ref{eq:sopt}).
268 S_\textit{opt} = \sqrt[3]{\frac{2}{N} \cdot \frac{P_\textit{dyn}}{P_\textit{static}} \cdot
269 \left( 1 + \sum_{i=2}^{N} \frac{T_i^3}{T_1^3} \right) }
272 \JC{The following 2 sections can be merged easily}
274 \section{Performance evaluation of MPI programs}
277 The performance (execution time) of parallel synchronous MPI applications depend on
278 the time of the slowest task as in figure~(\ref{fig:homo}). If there is no communication and the application is not data bounded, the
279 execution time of a parallel program is linearly proportional to the operational
280 frequency and any DVFS operation for energy reduction increases the
281 execution time of the parallel program. Therefore, the scaling factor $S$ is linearly proportional to the execution time. However, in most of MPI applications the processes exchange data. During these
282 communications the processors involved remain idle until the communications are
283 finished. For that reason any change in the frequency has no impact on the time
284 of communication~\cite{17}. The
285 communication time for a task is the summation of periods of time that begin with an MPI call for
286 sending or receiving a message till the message is synchronously sent or received. To be able to predict the execution time of MPI program, the communication time and
287 the computation time for the slower task must be measured before scaling. These times are used to predict the execution time for any MPI program as a function of
288 the new scaling factor as in EQ~(\ref{eq:tnew}).
291 \textit T_\textit{new} = T_\textit{Max Comp Old} \cdot S + T_{\textit{Max Comm Old}}
293 In this paper, this prediction method is used to select the best scaling factor for each processor as presented in the next section.
295 \section{Performance to energy competition}
298 This section demonstrates our approach for choosing the optimal scaling
299 factor. This factor gives maximum energy reduction taking into account the
300 execution times for both computation and communication. The relation
301 between the energy and the performance is nonlinear and complex, because the
302 relation of the energy with scaling factor is nonlinear and with the performance
303 it is linear see~\cite{17}. Moreover, they are not measured using the same metric.
304 For solving this problem, we normalize the energy by calculating the ratio
305 between the consumed energy with scaled frequency and the consumed energy
306 without scaled frequency:
309 E_\textit{Norm} = \frac{ E_\textit{Reduced}}{E_\textit{Original}} \\
310 {} = \frac{P_\textit{dyn} \cdot S_1^{-2} \cdot
311 \left( T_1 + \sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
312 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot S_1 \cdot N }{
313 P_\textit{dyn} \cdot \left(T_1+\sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
314 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot N }
316 By the same way we can normalize the performance as follows:
319 P_\textit{Norm} = \frac{T_\textit{New}}{T_\textit{Old}}
320 = \frac{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} \cdot S +
321 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} +
322 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}
324 The second problem is that the optimization operation for both energy and performance
325 is not in the same direction. In other words, the normalized energy and the
326 performance curves are not in the same direction see figure~(\ref{fig:r2}).
327 While the main goal is to optimize the energy and performance in the same
328 time. According to the equations~(\ref{eq:enorm}) and~(\ref{eq:pnorm}), the
329 scaling factor \emph S reduce both the energy and the performance
330 simultaneously. But the main objective is to produce maximum energy reduction
331 with minimum performance reduction. Many researchers used different strategies
332 to solve this nonlinear problem for example see~\cite{19,42}, their methods add
333 big overhead to the algorithm for selecting the suitable frequency. In this
334 paper we present a method to find the optimal scaling factor \emph S for
335 optimizing both energy and performance simultaneously without adding big
336 overheads. Our solution for this problem is to make the optimization process
337 have the same direction. Therefore, we inverse the equation of normalize
338 performance as follows:
341 P^{-1}_\textit{Norm} = \frac{ T_\textit{Old}}{ T_\textit{New}}
342 = \frac{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} +
343 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} \cdot S +
344 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}
348 \subfloat[Converted relation.]{%
349 \includegraphics[width=.4\textwidth]{fig/file}\label{fig:r1}}%
351 \subfloat[Real relation.]{%
352 \includegraphics[width=.4\textwidth]{fig/file3}\label{fig:r2}}
354 \caption{The energy and performance relation}
356 Then, we can modelize our objective function as finding the maximum distance
357 between the energy curve EQ~(\ref{eq:enorm}) and the inverse of performance
358 curve EQ~(\ref{eq:pnorm_en}) over all available scaling factors. This represents
359 the minimum energy consumption with minimum execution time (better performance)
360 at the same time, see figure~(\ref{fig:r1}). Then our objective function has the
364 Max Dist = \max_{j=1,2,\dots,F} (\overbrace{P^{-1}_\textit{Norm}(S_j)}^{\text{Maximize}} -
365 \overbrace{E_\textit{Norm}(S_j)}^{\text{Minimize}} )
367 where F is the number of available frequencies. Then we can select the optimal scaling factor that satisfies
368 EQ~(\ref{eq:max}). Our objective function can work with any energy model or
369 static power values stored in a data file. Moreover, this function works in
370 optimal way when the energy curve has a convex form over the available frequency scaling
371 factors as shown in~\cite{15,3,19}.
373 \section{Optimal scaling factor for performance and energy}
375 Algorithm~\ref{EPSA} computes the optimal scaling factor according to the objective function described above.
376 \begin{algorithm}[tp]
377 \caption{Scaling factor selection algorithm}
379 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
380 \State Initialize the variable $Dist=0$
381 \State Set dynamic and static power values.
382 \State Set $P_{states}$ to the number of available frequencies.
383 \State Set the variable $F_{new}$ to max. frequency, $F_{new} = F_{max} $
384 \State Set the variable $F_{diff}$ to the difference between two successive frequencies.
385 \For {$j:=1$ to $P_{states} $}
386 \State - $F_{new}=F_{new} - F_{diff} $
387 \State - $S = \frac{F_\textit{max}}{F_\textit{new}}$
388 \State - $S_i = S \cdot \frac{T_1}{T_i}= \frac{F_\textit{max}}{F_\textit{new}} \cdot \frac{T_1}{T_i} \
390 \State - $E_\textit{Norm} = \frac{P_\textit{dyn} \cdot S_1^{-2} \cdot
391 \left( T_1 + \sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
392 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot S_1 \cdot N }{
393 P_\textit{dyn} \cdot \left(T_1+\sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
394 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot N }$
395 \State - $P_{NormInv}=T_{old}/T_{new}$
396 \If{ $(P_{NormInv}-E_{Norm} > Dist$) }
398 \State $Dist = P_{NormInv} - E_{Norm}$
401 \State Return $S_{opt}$
405 The proposed algorithm works online during the execution time of the MPI
406 program. It selects the optimal scaling factor after gathering the computation and communication times
407 from the program after one iteration. Then the program changes the new frequencies of the CPUs according to the computed scaling factors. This algorithm has a small execution time: for a homogeneous cluster composed of nodes having the characteristics presented in table~\ref{table:platform}, it takes 0.00152 $ms$ on average for 4 nodes and 0.00665 $ms$ on average for 32 nodes. The algorithm complexity is O(F$\cdot$N),
408 where F is the number of available frequencies and N is the number of computing nodes. The algorithm is called just
409 once during the execution of the program. The DVFS algorithm~(\ref{dvfs}) shows where and when the algorithm is called
412 \caption{Platform file parameters}
415 \begin{tabular}{|*{7}{l|}}
417 Max & Min & Backbone & Backbone&Link &Link& Sharing \\
418 Freq. & Freq. & Bandwidth & Latency & Bandwidth& Latency&Policy \\ \hline
419 \np{2.5} & \np{800} & \np[GBps]{2.25} &\np[$\mu$s]{0.5}& \np[GBps]{1} & \np[$\mu$s]{50} &Full \\
420 GHz& MHz& & & & &Duplex \\\hline
422 \label{table:platform}
425 %\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
427 \begin{algorithm}[tp]
430 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
431 \For {$k:=1$ to $Some-Iterations \; $}
432 \State -Computations section.
433 \State -Communications section.
435 \State -Gather all times of computation and\par\hspace{13 pt} communication from each node.
436 \State -Call algorithm~\ref{EPSA} with these times.
437 \State -Compute the new frequency from the \par\hspace{13 pt} returned optimal scaling factor.
438 \State -Set the new frequency to the CPU.
443 After obtaining the optimal scaling factor, the program
444 calculates the new frequency $F_i$ for each task proportionally to its time
445 value $T_i$. By substitution of EQ~(\ref{eq:s}) in EQ~(\ref{eq:si}), we
446 can calculate the new frequency $F_i$ as follows:
449 F_i = \frac{F_\textit{max} \cdot T_i}{S_\textit{optimal} \cdot T_\textit{max}}
451 According to this equation all the nodes may have the same frequency value if
452 they have balanced workloads, otherwise, they take different frequencies when
453 having imbalanced workloads. Thus, EQ~(\ref{eq:fi}) adapts the frequency of the CPU to the nodes' workloads to maintain performance.
455 \section{Experimental results}
457 Our experiments are executed on the simulator SimGrid/SMPI
458 v3.10. We configure the simulator to use a homogeneous cluster with one core per
460 detailed characteristics of our platform file are shown in the
461 table~(\ref{table:platform}).
462 Each node in the cluster has 18 frequency values
463 from 2.5 GHz to 800 MHz with 100 MHz difference between each two successive
464 frequencies. The simulated network link is 1 GB Ethernet (TCP/IP).
465 The backbone of the cluster simulates a high performance switch.
467 \subsection{Performance prediction verification}
469 In this section we evaluate the precision of our performance prediction method based on EQ~(\ref{eq:tnew}) by applying it the NAS benchmarks. The NAS programs are executed with the class B option for comparing the
470 real execution time with the predicted execution time. Each program runs offline
471 with all available scaling factors on 8 or 9 nodes (depending on the benchmark) to produce real execution
472 time values. These scaling factors are computed by dividing the maximum
473 frequency by the new one see EQ~(\ref{eq:s}).
476 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/cg_per}\hfill%
477 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/mg_pre}\hfill%
478 % \includegraphics[width=.4\textwidth]{fig/bt_pre}\qquad%
479 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/lu_pre}\hfill%
480 \caption{Comparing predicted to real execution time}
483 %see Figure~\ref{fig:pred}
484 In our cluster there are 18 available frequency states for each processor.
485 This leads to 18 run states for each program. We use seven MPI programs of the
486 NAS parallel benchmarks: CG, MG, EP, FT, BT, LU
487 and SP. Figure~(\ref{fig:pred}) presents plots of the real execution times and the simulated ones. The maximum normalized error between the predicted execution time and the real time (SimGrid time) for all programs is between 0.0073 to 0.031. The better case is for CG and the worse case is for LU.
488 \subsection{The experimental results for the scaling algorithm }
489 The proposed algorithm was applied to seven MPI programs of the NAS
490 benchmarks (EP, CG, MG, FT, BT, LU and SP) which were run with three classes (A, B and
491 C). For each instance the benchmarks were executed on a number of processors
492 proportional to the size of the class. Each class represents the problem size
493 ascending from the class A to C. Additionally, depending on some speed up points
494 for each class we run the classes A, B and C on 4, 8 or 9 and 16 nodes
496 Depending on EQ~(\ref{eq:energy}), we measure the energy consumption for all
497 the NAS MPI programs while assuming the power dynamic with the highest frequency is equal to \np[W]{20} and
498 the power static is equal to \np[W]{4} for all experiments. These power values were also
499 used by Rauber and Rünger in~\cite{3}. The results showed that the algorithm selected
500 different scaling factors for each program depending on the communication
501 features of the program as in the plots~(\ref{fig:nas}). These plots illustrate that
502 there are different distances between the normalized energy and the normalized
503 inverted performance curves, because there are different communication features
504 for each benchmark. When there are little or not communications, the inverted
505 performance curve is very close to the energy curve. Then the distance between
506 the two curves is very small. This leads to small energy savings. The opposite
507 happens when there are a lot of communication, the distance between the two
508 curves is big. This leads to more energy savings (e.g. CG and FT), see
509 table~(\ref{table:factors results}). All discovered frequency scaling factors
510 optimize both the energy and the performance simultaneously for all NAS
511 benchmarks. In table~(\ref{table:factors results}), we record all optimal scaling
512 factors results for each benchmark running class C. These scaling factors give the maximum
513 energy saving percent and the minimum performance degradation percent at the
514 same time from all available scaling factors.
517 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/ep}\hfill%
518 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/cg}\hfill%
519 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/sp}
520 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/lu}\hfill%
521 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/bt}\hfill%
522 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/ft}
523 \caption{Optimal scaling factors for the predicted energy and performance of NAS benchmarks}
527 \caption{The scaling factors results}
530 \begin{tabular}{|l|*{4}{r|}}
532 Program & Optimal & Energy & Performance&Energy-Perf.\\
533 Name & Scaling Factor& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance \\ \hline
534 CG & 1.56 &39.23&14.88 &24.35\\ \hline
535 MG & 1.47 &34.97&21.70 &13.27 \\ \hline
536 EP & 1.04 &22.14&20.73 &1.41\\ \hline
537 LU & 1.38 &35.83&22.49 &13.34\\ \hline
538 BT & 1.31 &29.60&21.28 &8.32\\ \hline
539 SP & 1.38 &33.48&21.36 &12.12\\ \hline
540 FT & 1.47 &34.72&19.00 &15.72\\ \hline
542 \label{table:factors results}
543 % is used to refer this table in the text
545 As shown in the table~(\ref{table:factors results}), when the optimal scaling
546 factor has big value we can gain more energy savings for example as in CG and
547 FT. The opposite happens when the optimal scaling factor is small value as
548 example BT and EP. Our algorithm selects big scaling factor value when the
549 communication and the other slacks times are big and smaller ones in opposite
550 cases. In EP there are no communications inside the iterations. This make our
551 algorithm to selects smaller scaling factor values (inducing smaller energy savings).
553 \subsection{Results comparison}
555 In this section, we compare our scaling factor selection method with Rauber and Rünger
556 methods~\cite{3}. They had two scenarios, the first is to reduce energy to the
557 optimal level without considering the performance as in EQ~(\ref{eq:sopt}). We
558 refer to this scenario as $R_{E}$. The second scenario is similar to the first
559 except setting the slower task to the maximum frequency (when the scale $S=1$)
560 to keep the performance from degradation as mush as possible. We refer to this
561 scenario as $R_{E-P}$. While we refer to our algorithm as EPSA (Energy to Performance Scaling Algorithm). The comparison
562 is made in tables \ref{table:compareA}, \ref{table:compareB},
563 and~\ref{table:compareC}. These
564 tables show the results of our method and Rauber and Rünger scenarios for all the
565 NAS benchmarks programs for classes A, B and C.
567 \caption{Comparing results for the NAS class A}
570 \begin{tabular}{|l|l|*{4}{r|}}
572 Method&Program&Factor& Energy& Performance &Energy-Perf.\\
573 Name &Name&Value& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance
575 % \rowcolor[gray]{0.85}
576 $EPSA$&CG & 1.56 &37.02 & 13.88 & 23.14\\ \hline
577 $R_{E-P}$&CG &2.14 &42.77 & 25.27 & 17.50\\ \hline
578 $R_{E}$&CG &2.14 &42.77&26.46&16.31\\ \hline
580 $EPSA$&MG & 1.47 &27.66&16.82&10.84\\ \hline
581 $R_{E-P}$&MG &2.14&34.45&31.84&2.61\\ \hline
582 $R_{E}$&MG &2.14&34.48&33.65&0.80 \\ \hline
584 $EPSA$&EP &1.19 &25.32&20.79&4.53\\ \hline
585 $R_{E-P}$&EP&2.05&41.45&55.67&-14.22\\ \hline
586 $R_{E}$&EP&2.05&42.09&57.59&-15.50\\ \hline
588 $EPSA$&LU&1.56& 39.55 &19.38& 20.17\\ \hline
589 $R_{E-P}$&LU&2.14&45.62&27.00&18.62 \\ \hline
590 $R_{E}$&LU&2.14&45.66&33.01&12.65\\ \hline
592 $EPSA$&BT&1.31& 29.60&20.53&9.07 \\ \hline
593 $R_{E-P}$&BT&2.10&45.53&49.63&-4.10\\ \hline
594 $R_{E}$&BT&2.10&43.93&52.86&-8.93\\ \hline
596 $EPSA$&SP&1.38& 33.51&15.65&17.86 \\ \hline
597 $R_{E-P}$&SP&2.11&45.62&42.52&3.10\\ \hline
598 $R_{E}$&SP&2.11&45.78&43.09&2.69\\ \hline
600 $EPSA$&FT&1.25&25.00&10.80&14.20 \\ \hline
601 $R_{E-P}$&FT&2.10&39.29&34.30&4.99 \\ \hline
602 $R_{E}$&FT&2.10&37.56&38.21&-0.65\\ \hline
604 \label{table:compareA}
605 % is used to refer this table in the text
608 \caption{Comparing results for the NAS class B}
611 \begin{tabular}{|l|l|*{4}{r|}}
613 Method&Program&Factor& Energy& Performance &Energy-Perf.\\
614 Name &Name&Value& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance
616 % \rowcolor[gray]{0.85}
617 $EPSA$&CG & 1.66 &39.23&16.63&22.60 \\ \hline
618 $R_{E-P}$&CG &2.15 &45.34&27.60&17.74\\ \hline
619 $R_{E}$&CG &2.15 &45.34&28.88&16.46\\ \hline
621 $EPSA$ &MG & 1.47 &34.98&18.35&16.63\\ \hline
622 $R_{E-P}$&MG &2.14&43.55&36.42&7.13 \\ \hline
623 $R_{E}$&MG &2.14&43.56&37.07&6.49 \\ \hline
625 $EPSA$&EP &1.08 &20.29&17.15&3.14 \\ \hline
626 $R_{E-P}$&EP&2.00&42.38&56.88&-14.50\\ \hline
627 $R_{E}$&EP&2.00&39.73&59.94&-20.21\\ \hline
629 $EPSA$&LU&1.47&38.57&21.34&17.23 \\ \hline
630 $R_{E-P}$&LU&2.10&43.62&36.51&7.11 \\ \hline
631 $R_{E}$&LU&2.10&43.61&38.54&5.07 \\ \hline
633 $EPSA$&BT&1.31& 29.59&20.88&8.71\\ \hline
634 $R_{E-P}$&BT&2.10&44.53&53.05&-8.52\\ \hline
635 $R_{E}$&BT&2.10&42.93&52.80&-9.87\\ \hline
637 $EPSA$&SP&1.38&33.44&19.24&14.20 \\ \hline
638 $R_{E-P}$&SP&2.15&45.69&43.20&2.49\\ \hline
639 $R_{E}$&SP&2.15&45.41&44.47&0.94\\ \hline
641 $EPSA$&FT&1.38&34.40&14.57&19.83 \\ \hline
642 $R_{E-P}$&FT&2.13&42.98&37.35&5.63 \\ \hline
643 $R_{E}$&FT&2.13&43.04&37.90&5.14\\ \hline
645 \label{table:compareB}
646 % is used to refer this table in the text
650 \caption{Comparing results for the NAS class C}
653 \begin{tabular}{|l|l|*{4}{r|}}
655 Method&Program&Factor& Energy& Performance &Energy-Perf.\\
656 Name &Name&Value& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance
658 % \rowcolor[gray]{0.85}
659 $EPSA$&CG & 1.56 &39.23&14.88&24.35 \\ \hline
660 $R_{E-P}$&CG &2.15 &45.36&25.89&19.47\\ \hline
661 $R_{E}$&CG &2.15 &45.36&26.70&18.66\\ \hline
663 $EPSA$&MG & 1.47 &34.97&21.69&13.27\\ \hline
664 $R_{E-P}$&MG &2.15&43.65&40.45&3.20 \\ \hline
665 $R_{E}$&MG &2.15&43.64&41.38&2.26 \\ \hline
667 $EPSA$&EP &1.04 &22.14&20.73&1.41 \\ \hline
668 $R_{E-P}$&EP&1.92&39.40&56.33&-16.93\\ \hline
669 $R_{E}$&EP&1.92&38.10&56.35&-18.25\\ \hline
671 $EPSA$&LU&1.38&35.83&22.49&13.34 \\ \hline
672 $R_{E-P}$&LU&2.15&44.97&41.00&3.97 \\ \hline
673 $R_{E}$&LU&2.15&44.97&41.80&3.17 \\ \hline
675 $EPSA$&BT&1.31& 29.60&21.28&8.32\\ \hline
676 $R_{E-P}$&BT&2.13&45.60&49.84&-4.24\\ \hline
677 $R_{E}$&BT&2.13&44.90&55.16&-10.26\\ \hline
679 $EPSA$&SP&1.38&33.48&21.35&12.12\\ \hline
680 $R_{E-P}$&SP&2.10&45.69&43.60&2.09\\ \hline
681 $R_{E}$&SP&2.10&45.75&44.10&1.65\\ \hline
683 $EPSA$&FT&1.47&34.72&19.00&15.72 \\ \hline
684 $R_{E-P}$&FT&2.04&39.40&37.10&2.30\\ \hline
685 $R_{E}$&FT&2.04&39.35&37.70&1.65\\ \hline
687 \label{table:compareC}
688 % is used to refer this table in the text
690 As shown in tables~\ref{table:compareA},~\ref{table:compareB} and~\ref{table:compareC}, the ($R_{E-P}$) method outperforms the ($R_{E}$) method in terms of performance and energy reduction. The ($R_{E-P}$) method also gives better energy savings than our method. However, although our scaling factor is not optimal for energy reduction, the results in these tables prove that our algorithm returns the best scaling factor that satisfy our objective method : the largest distance between energy reduction and performance degradation. Negative values in the energy-performance column mean that one of the two objectives (energy or performance) have been degraded more than the other. The positive trade-offs with the highest values lead to maximum energy savings
691 while keeping the performance degradation as low as possible. Our algorithm always
692 gives the highest positive energy to performance trade-offs while Rauber and Rünger method
693 ($R_{E-P}$) gives in some time negative trade-offs such as in BT and
697 % \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/compare_class_A}
698 % \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/compare_class_B}
699 % \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/compare_class_C}
700 % \caption{Comparing our method to Rauber and Rünger methods}
701 % \label{fig:compare}
705 In this paper, we have presented a new online scaling factor selection method that optimizes simultaneously the energy and performance of a distributed application running on an homogeneous cluster. It uses the computation and communication times measured at the first iteration to predict energy consumption and the performance of the parallel application at every available frequency. Then, it selects the scaling factor that gives the best trade-off between energy reduction and performance which is the maximum distance between the energy and the inverted performance curves. To evaluate this method, we have applied it to the NAS benchmarks and it was compared to Rauber and Rünger methods while being executed on the simulator SimGrid. The results showed that our method, outperforms Rauber and Rünger methods in terms of energy-performance ratio.
707 In the near future, we would like to adapt this scaling factor selection method to heterogeneous platforms where each node has different characteristics. In particular, each CPU has different available frequencies, energy consumption and performance. It would be also interesting to develop a new energy model for asynchronous parallel iterative methods where the number of iterations is not known in advance and depends on the global convergence of the iterative system.
710 \section*{Acknowledgment}
711 Computations have been performed on the supercomputer facilities of the
712 Mésocentre de calcul de Franche-Comté. As a PhD student, M. Ahmed Fanfakh, would like to thank the University of
713 Babylon (Iraq) for supporting his work.
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729 %%% ispell-local-dictionary: "american"
732 % LocalWords: Fanfakh Charr FIXME Tianhe DVFS HPC NAS NPB SMPI Rauber's Rauber
733 % LocalWords: CMOS EQ EPSA Franche Comté Tflop Rünger IUT Maréchal Juin cedex