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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 % Telephone: \mbox{+33 3 84 58 77 86}, % Raphaël
40 % Fax: \mbox{+33 3 84 58 77 81}\\ % Dept Info
41 Email: \email{{jean-claude.charr,raphael.couturier,ahmed.fanfakh_badri_muslim,arnaud.giersch}@univ-fcomte.fr}
48 Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS) can be applied to modern CPUs.
49 This technique is usually used to reduce the energy consumed by a CPU while
50 computing . Indeed, power consumption by a processor at a given instant is
51 exponentially related to its frequency. Thus, decreasing the frequency reduces
52 the power consumed by the CPU. However, it can also significantly affect the
53 performance of the executed program if it is compute bound and if a low CPU
54 frequency is selected. The performance degradation ratio can even be higher than
55 the saved energy ratio. Therefore, the chosen scaling factor must give the best possible trade-off
56 between energy reduction and performance.
58 In this paper we present an algorithm
59 that predicts the energy consumed with each frequency gear and selects the one that
60 gives the best ratio between energy consumption reduction and performance.
61 This algorithm works online without training or profiling and
62 has a very small overhead. It also takes into account synchronous communications between the nodes
63 that are executing the distributed algorithm. The algorithm has been evaluated over the SimGrid simulator
64 while being applied to the NAS parallel benchmark programs. The results of the experiments show that it outperforms other existing scaling factor selection algorithms.
67 \section{Introduction}
70 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
71 down in the coming years. To satisfy this demand, researchers and supercomputers
72 constructors have been regularly increasing the number of computing cores and processors in
73 supercomputers (for example in November 2013, according to the TOP500
74 list~\cite{43}, the Tianhe-2 was the fastest supercomputer. It has more than 3
75 millions of cores and delivers more than 33 Tflop/s while consuming 17808
76 kW). This large increase in number of computing cores has led to large energy
77 consumption by these architectures. Moreover, the price of energy is expected to
78 continue its ascent according to the demand. For all these reasons energy
79 reduction became an important topic in the high performance computing field. To
80 tackle this problem, many researchers used DVFS (Dynamic Voltage Frequency
81 Scaling) operations which reduce dynamically the frequency and voltage of cores
82 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
83 performance of computation. Therefore researchers try to reduce the frequency to
84 minimum when processors are idle (waiting for data from other processors or
85 communicating with other processors). Moreover, depending on their objectives
86 they use heuristics to find the best scaling factor during the computation. If
87 they aim for performance they choose the best scaling factor that reduces the
88 consumed energy while affecting as little as possible the performance. On the
89 other hand, if they aim for energy reduction, the chosen scaling factor must
90 produce the most energy efficient execution without considering the degradation
91 of the performance. It is important to notice that lowering the frequency to
92 minimum value does not always give the most energy efficient execution due to energy
93 leakage. The best scaling factor might be chosen during execution (online) or
94 during a pre-execution phase. In this paper, we present an
95 algorithm that selects a frequency scaling factor that simultaneously takes into
96 consideration the energy consumption by the CPU and the performance of the application. The
97 main objective of HPC systems is to execute as fast as possible the application.
98 Therefore, our algorithm selects the scaling factor online with
99 very small footprint. The proposed algorithm takes into account the
100 communication times of the MPI program to choose the scaling factor. This
101 algorithm has ability to predict both energy consumption and execution time over
102 all available scaling factors. The prediction achieved depends on some
103 computing time information, gathered at the beginning of the runtime. We apply
104 this algorithm to seven MPI benchmarks. These MPI programs are the NAS parallel
105 benchmarks (NPB v3.3) developed by NASA~\cite{44}. Our experiments are executed
106 using the simulator SimGrid/SMPI v3.10~\cite{Casanova:2008:SGF:1397760.1398183}
107 over an homogeneous distributed memory architecture. Furthermore, we compare the
108 proposed algorithm with Rauber and Rünger methods~\cite{3}.
109 The comparison's results show that our algorithm gives better energy-time trade-off.
111 This paper is organized as follows: Section~\ref{sec.relwork} presents some related works
112 from other authors. Section~\ref{sec.exe} explains the execution of parallel
113 tasks and the sources of slack times. It also presents an energy
114 model for homogeneous platforms. Section~\ref{sec.mpip} describes how the performance
115 of MPI programs can be predicted . Section~\ref{sec.compet} presents the energy-performance
116 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
117 model and presents the results of the proposed algorithm. It also shows the comparison results between our method and other existing methods. Finally,
118 we conclude in Section~\ref{sec.concl} with a summary and some future works.
119 \section{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 multi-task 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 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) }
273 \section{Performance evaluation of MPI programs}
276 The performance (execution time) of parallel synchronous MPI applications depend on
277 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
278 execution time of a parallel program is linearly proportional to the operational
279 frequency and any DVFS operation for energy reduction increases the
280 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
281 communications the processors involved remain idle until the communications are
282 finished. For that reason any change in the frequency has no impact on the time
283 of communication~\cite{17}. The
284 communication time for a task is the summation of periods of time that begin with an MPI call for
285 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
286 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
287 the new scaling factor as in EQ~(\ref{eq:tnew}).
290 \textit T_\textit{new} = T_\textit{Max Comp Old} \cdot S + T_{\textit{Max Comm Old}}
292 In this paper, this prediction method is used to select the best scaling factor for each processor as presented in the next section.
294 \section{Performance to energy competition}
297 This section demonstrates our approach for choosing the optimal scaling
298 factor. This factor gives maximum energy reduction taking into account the
299 execution times for both computation and communication. The relation
300 between the energy and the performance is nonlinear and complex, because the
301 relation of the energy with scaling factor is nonlinear and with the performance
302 it is linear see~\cite{17}. Moreover, they are not measured using the same metric.
303 For solving this problem, we normalize the energy by calculating the ratio
304 between the consumed energy with scaled frequency and the consumed energy
305 without scaled frequency:
308 E_\textit{Norm} = \frac{ E_\textit{Reduced}}{E_\textit{Original}} \\
309 {} = \frac{P_\textit{dyn} \cdot S_1^{-2} \cdot
310 \left( T_1 + \sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
311 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot S_1 \cdot N }{
312 P_\textit{dyn} \cdot \left(T_1+\sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
313 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot N }
315 By the same way we can normalize the performance as follows:
318 P_\textit{Norm} = \frac{T_\textit{New}}{T_\textit{Old}}
319 = \frac{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} \cdot S +
320 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} +
321 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}
323 The second problem is that the optimization operation for both energy and performance
324 is not in the same direction. In other words, the normalized energy and the
325 performance curves are not in the same direction see figure~(\ref{fig:r2}).
326 While the main goal is to optimize the energy and performance in the same
327 time. According to the equations~(\ref{eq:enorm}) and~(\ref{eq:pnorm}), the
328 scaling factor \emph S reduce both the energy and the performance
329 simultaneously. But the main objective is to produce maximum energy reduction
330 with minimum performance reduction. Many researchers used different strategies
331 to solve this nonlinear problem for example see~\cite{19,42}, their methods add
332 big overhead to the algorithm for selecting the suitable frequency. In this
333 paper we present a method to find the optimal scaling factor \emph S for
334 optimizing both energy and performance simultaneously without adding big
335 overheads. Our solution for this problem is to make the optimization process
336 have the same direction. Therefore, we inverse the equation of normalize
337 performance as follows:
340 P^{-1}_\textit{Norm} = \frac{ T_\textit{Old}}{ T_\textit{New}}
341 = \frac{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} +
342 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}{T_\textit{Max Comp Old} \cdot S +
343 T_\textit{Max Comm Old}}
347 \subfloat[Converted relation.]{%
348 \includegraphics[width=.4\textwidth]{fig/file}\label{fig:r1}}%
350 \subfloat[Real relation.]{%
351 \includegraphics[width=.4\textwidth]{fig/file3}\label{fig:r2}}
353 \caption{The energy and performance relation}
355 Then, we can modelize our objective function as finding the maximum distance
356 between the energy curve EQ~(\ref{eq:enorm}) and the inverse of performance
357 curve EQ~(\ref{eq:pnorm_en}) over all available scaling factors. This represents
358 the minimum energy consumption with minimum execution time (better performance)
359 at the same time, see figure~(\ref{fig:r1}). Then our objective function has the
363 Max Dist = \max_{j=1,2,\dots,F} (\overbrace{P^{-1}_\textit{Norm}(S_j)}^{\text{Maximize}} -
364 \overbrace{E_\textit{Norm}(S_j)}^{\text{Minimize}} )
366 where F is the number of available frequencies. Then we can select the optimal scaling factor that satisfies
367 EQ~(\ref{eq:max}). Our objective function can work with any energy model or
368 static power values stored in a data file. Moreover, this function works in
369 optimal way when the energy curve has a convex form over the available frequency scaling
370 factors as shown in~\cite{15,3,19}.
372 \section{Optimal scaling factor for performance and energy}
374 Algorithm~\ref{EPSA} computes the optimal scaling factor according to the objective function described above.
375 \begin{algorithm}[tp]
376 \caption{Scaling factor selection algorithm}
378 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
379 \State Initialize the variable $Dist=0$
380 \State Set dynamic and static power values.
381 \State Set $P_{states}$ to the number of available frequencies.
382 \State Set the variable $F_{new}$ to max. frequency, $F_{new} = F_{max} $
383 \State Set the variable $F_{diff}$ to the difference between two successive frequencies.
384 \For {$j:=1$ to $P_{states} $}
385 \State - $F_{new}=F_{new} - F_{diff} $
386 \State - $S = \frac{F_\textit{max}}{F_\textit{new}}$
387 \State - $S_i = S \cdot \frac{T_1}{T_i}= \frac{F_\textit{max}}{F_\textit{new}} \cdot \frac{T_1}{T_i} \
389 \State - $E_\textit{Norm} = \frac{P_\textit{dyn} \cdot S_1^{-2} \cdot
390 \left( T_1 + \sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
391 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot S_1 \cdot N }{
392 P_\textit{dyn} \cdot \left(T_1+\sum_{i=2}^{N}\frac{T_i^3}{T_1^2}\right) +
393 P_\textit{static} \cdot T_1 \cdot N }$
394 \State - $P_{NormInv}=T_{old}/T_{new}$
395 \If{ $(P_{NormInv}-E_{Norm} > Dist$) }
397 \State $Dist = P_{NormInv} - E_{Norm}$
400 \State Return $S_{opt}$
404 The proposed algorithm works online during the execution time of the MPI
405 program. It selects the optimal scaling factor after gathering the computation and communication times
406 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),
407 where F is the number of available frequencies and N is the number of computing nodes. The algorithm is called just
408 once during the execution of the program. The DVFS algorithm~(\ref{dvfs}) shows where and when the algorithm is called
411 \caption{Platform file parameters}
414 \begin{tabular}{|*{7}{l|}}
416 Max & Min & Backbone & Backbone&Link &Link& Sharing \\
417 Freq. & Freq. & Bandwidth & Latency & Bandwidth& Latency&Policy \\ \hline
418 \np{2.5} & \np{800} & \np[GBps]{2.25} &\np[$\mu$s]{0.5}& \np[GBps]{1} & \np[$\mu$s]{50} &Full \\
419 GHz& MHz& & & & &Duplex \\\hline
421 \label{table:platform}
424 %\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
426 \begin{algorithm}[tp]
429 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
430 \For {$k:=1$ to $Some-Iterations \; $}
431 \State -Computations section.
432 \State -Communications section.
434 \State -Gather all times of computation and\par\hspace{13 pt} communication from each node.
435 \State -Call algorithm~\ref{EPSA} with these times.
436 \State -Compute the new frequency from the \par\hspace{13 pt} returned optimal scaling factor.
437 \State -Set the new frequency to the CPU.
442 After obtaining the optimal scaling factor, the program
443 calculates the new frequency $F_i$ for each task proportionally to its time
444 value $T_i$. By substitution of EQ~(\ref{eq:s}) in EQ~(\ref{eq:si}), we
445 can calculate the new frequency $F_i$ as follows:
448 F_i = \frac{F_\textit{max} \cdot T_i}{S_\textit{optimal} \cdot T_\textit{max}}
450 According to this equation all the nodes may have the same frequency value if
451 they have balanced workloads, otherwise, they take different frequencies when
452 having imbalanced workloads. Thus, EQ~(\ref{eq:fi}) adapts the frequency of the CPU to the nodes' workloads to maintain performance.
454 \section{Experimental results}
456 Our experiments are executed on the simulator SimGrid/SMPI
457 v3.10. We configure the simulator to use a homogeneous cluster with one core per
459 detailed characteristics of our platform file are shown in the
460 table~(\ref{table:platform}).
461 Each node in the cluster has 18 frequency values
462 from 2.5 GHz to 800 MHz with 100 MHz difference between each two successive
463 frequencies. The simulated network link is 1 GB Ethernet (TCP/IP).
464 The backbone of the cluster simulates a high performance switch.
466 \subsection{Performance prediction verification}
468 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
469 real execution time with the predicted execution time. Each program runs offline
470 with all available scaling factors on 8 or 9 nodes (depending on the benchmark) to produce real execution
471 time values. These scaling factors are computed by dividing the maximum
472 frequency by the new one see EQ~(\ref{eq:s}).
475 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/cg_per}\hfill%
476 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/mg_pre}\hfill%
477 % \includegraphics[width=.4\textwidth]{fig/bt_pre}\qquad%
478 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/lu_pre}\hfill%
479 \caption{Comparing predicted to real execution time}
482 %see Figure~\ref{fig:pred}
483 In our cluster there are 18 available frequency states for each processor.
484 This leads to 18 run states for each program. We use seven MPI programs of the
485 NAS parallel benchmarks: CG, MG, EP, FT, BT, LU
486 and SP. Figure~(\ref{fig:pred}) presents plots of the real execution times and the simulated ones. The maximum normalized error between these two execution times varies between 0.0073 to 0.031 dependent on the executed benchmark. The smallest prediction error was for CG and the worst one was for LU.
487 \subsection{The experimental results for the scaling algorithm }
488 The proposed algorithm was applied to seven MPI programs of the NAS
489 benchmarks (EP, CG, MG, FT, BT, LU and SP) which were run with three classes (A, B and
490 C). For each instance the benchmarks were executed on a number of processors
491 proportional to the size of the class. Each class represents the problem size
492 ascending from the class A to C. Additionally, depending on some speed up points
493 for each class we run the classes A, B and C on 4, 8 or 9 and 16 nodes
495 Depending on EQ~(\ref{eq:energy}), we measure the energy consumption for all
496 the NAS MPI programs while assuming the power dynamic with the highest frequency is equal to \np[W]{20} and
497 the power static is equal to \np[W]{4} for all experiments. These power values were also
498 used by Rauber and Rünger in~\cite{3}. The results showed that the algorithm selected
499 different scaling factors for each program depending on the communication
500 features of the program as in the plots~(\ref{fig:nas}). These plots illustrate that
501 there are different distances between the normalized energy and the normalized
502 inverted performance curves, because there are different communication features
503 for each benchmark. When there are little or not communications, the inverted
504 performance curve is very close to the energy curve. Then the distance between
505 the two curves is very small. This leads to small energy savings. The opposite
506 happens when there are a lot of communication, the distance between the two
507 curves is big. This leads to more energy savings (e.g. CG and FT), see
508 table~(\ref{table:factors results}). All discovered frequency scaling factors
509 optimize both the energy and the performance simultaneously for all NAS
510 benchmarks. In table~(\ref{table:factors results}), we record all optimal scaling
511 factors results for each benchmark running class C. These scaling factors give the maximum
512 energy saving percent and the minimum performance degradation percent at the
513 same time from all available scaling factors.
516 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/ep}\hfill%
517 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/cg}\hfill%
518 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/sp}
519 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/lu}\hfill%
520 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/bt}\hfill%
521 \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/ft}
522 \caption{Optimal scaling factors for the predicted energy and performance of NAS benchmarks}
526 \caption{The scaling factors results}
529 \begin{tabular}{|l|*{4}{r|}}
531 Program & Optimal & Energy & Performance&Energy-Perf.\\
532 Name & Scaling Factor& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance \\ \hline
533 CG & 1.56 &39.23&14.88 &24.35\\ \hline
534 MG & 1.47 &34.97&21.70 &13.27 \\ \hline
535 EP & 1.04 &22.14&20.73 &1.41\\ \hline
536 LU & 1.38 &35.83&22.49 &13.34\\ \hline
537 BT & 1.31 &29.60&21.28 &8.32\\ \hline
538 SP & 1.38 &33.48&21.36 &12.12\\ \hline
539 FT & 1.47 &34.72&19.00 &15.72\\ \hline
541 \label{table:factors results}
542 % is used to refer this table in the text
544 As shown in the table~(\ref{table:factors results}), when the optimal scaling
545 factor has big value we can gain more energy savings for example as in CG and
546 FT. The opposite happens when the optimal scaling factor is small value as
547 example BT and EP. Our algorithm selects big scaling factor value when the
548 communication and the other slacks times are big and smaller ones in opposite
549 cases. In EP there are no communications inside the iterations. This make our
550 algorithm to selects smaller scaling factor values (inducing smaller energy savings).
552 \subsection{Results comparison}
554 In this section, we compare our scaling factor selection method with Rauber and Rünger
555 methods~\cite{3}. They had two scenarios, the first is to reduce energy to the
556 optimal level without considering the performance as in EQ~(\ref{eq:sopt}). We
557 refer to this scenario as $R_{E}$. The second scenario is similar to the first
558 except setting the slower task to the maximum frequency (when the scale $S=1$)
559 to keep the performance from degradation as mush as possible. We refer to this
560 scenario as $R_{E-P}$. While we refer to our algorithm as EPSA (Energy to Performance Scaling Algorithm). The comparison
561 is made in tables \ref{table:compareA}, \ref{table:compareB},
562 and~\ref{table:compareC}. These
563 tables show the results of our method and Rauber and Rünger scenarios for all the
564 NAS benchmarks programs for classes A, B and C.
566 \caption{Comparing results for the NAS class A}
569 \begin{tabular}{|l|l|*{4}{r|}}
571 Method&Program&Factor& Energy& Performance &Energy-Perf.\\
572 Name &Name&Value& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance
574 % \rowcolor[gray]{0.85}
575 $EPSA$&CG & 1.56 &37.02 & 13.88 & 23.14\\ \hline
576 $R_{E-P}$&CG &2.14 &42.77 & 25.27 & 17.50\\ \hline
577 $R_{E}$&CG &2.14 &42.77&26.46&16.31\\ \hline
579 $EPSA$&MG & 1.47 &27.66&16.82&10.84\\ \hline
580 $R_{E-P}$&MG &2.14&34.45&31.84&2.61\\ \hline
581 $R_{E}$&MG &2.14&34.48&33.65&0.80 \\ \hline
583 $EPSA$&EP &1.19 &25.32&20.79&4.53\\ \hline
584 $R_{E-P}$&EP&2.05&41.45&55.67&-14.22\\ \hline
585 $R_{E}$&EP&2.05&42.09&57.59&-15.50\\ \hline
587 $EPSA$&LU&1.56& 39.55 &19.38& 20.17\\ \hline
588 $R_{E-P}$&LU&2.14&45.62&27.00&18.62 \\ \hline
589 $R_{E}$&LU&2.14&45.66&33.01&12.65\\ \hline
591 $EPSA$&BT&1.31& 29.60&20.53&9.07 \\ \hline
592 $R_{E-P}$&BT&2.10&45.53&49.63&-4.10\\ \hline
593 $R_{E}$&BT&2.10&43.93&52.86&-8.93\\ \hline
595 $EPSA$&SP&1.38& 33.51&15.65&17.86 \\ \hline
596 $R_{E-P}$&SP&2.11&45.62&42.52&3.10\\ \hline
597 $R_{E}$&SP&2.11&45.78&43.09&2.69\\ \hline
599 $EPSA$&FT&1.25&25.00&10.80&14.20 \\ \hline
600 $R_{E-P}$&FT&2.10&39.29&34.30&4.99 \\ \hline
601 $R_{E}$&FT&2.10&37.56&38.21&-0.65\\ \hline
603 \label{table:compareA}
604 % is used to refer this table in the text
607 \caption{Comparing results for the NAS class B}
610 \begin{tabular}{|l|l|*{4}{r|}}
612 Method&Program&Factor& Energy& Performance &Energy-Perf.\\
613 Name &Name&Value& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance
615 % \rowcolor[gray]{0.85}
616 $EPSA$&CG & 1.66 &39.23&16.63&22.60 \\ \hline
617 $R_{E-P}$&CG &2.15 &45.34&27.60&17.74\\ \hline
618 $R_{E}$&CG &2.15 &45.34&28.88&16.46\\ \hline
620 $EPSA$ &MG & 1.47 &34.98&18.35&16.63\\ \hline
621 $R_{E-P}$&MG &2.14&43.55&36.42&7.13 \\ \hline
622 $R_{E}$&MG &2.14&43.56&37.07&6.49 \\ \hline
624 $EPSA$&EP &1.08 &20.29&17.15&3.14 \\ \hline
625 $R_{E-P}$&EP&2.00&42.38&56.88&-14.50\\ \hline
626 $R_{E}$&EP&2.00&39.73&59.94&-20.21\\ \hline
628 $EPSA$&LU&1.47&38.57&21.34&17.23 \\ \hline
629 $R_{E-P}$&LU&2.10&43.62&36.51&7.11 \\ \hline
630 $R_{E}$&LU&2.10&43.61&38.54&5.07 \\ \hline
632 $EPSA$&BT&1.31& 29.59&20.88&8.71\\ \hline
633 $R_{E-P}$&BT&2.10&44.53&53.05&-8.52\\ \hline
634 $R_{E}$&BT&2.10&42.93&52.80&-9.87\\ \hline
636 $EPSA$&SP&1.38&33.44&19.24&14.20 \\ \hline
637 $R_{E-P}$&SP&2.15&45.69&43.20&2.49\\ \hline
638 $R_{E}$&SP&2.15&45.41&44.47&0.94\\ \hline
640 $EPSA$&FT&1.38&34.40&14.57&19.83 \\ \hline
641 $R_{E-P}$&FT&2.13&42.98&37.35&5.63 \\ \hline
642 $R_{E}$&FT&2.13&43.04&37.90&5.14\\ \hline
644 \label{table:compareB}
645 % is used to refer this table in the text
649 \caption{Comparing results for the NAS class C}
652 \begin{tabular}{|l|l|*{4}{r|}}
654 Method&Program&Factor& Energy& Performance &Energy-Perf.\\
655 Name &Name&Value& Saving \%&Degradation \% &Distance
657 % \rowcolor[gray]{0.85}
658 $EPSA$&CG & 1.56 &39.23&14.88&24.35 \\ \hline
659 $R_{E-P}$&CG &2.15 &45.36&25.89&19.47\\ \hline
660 $R_{E}$&CG &2.15 &45.36&26.70&18.66\\ \hline
662 $EPSA$&MG & 1.47 &34.97&21.69&13.27\\ \hline
663 $R_{E-P}$&MG &2.15&43.65&40.45&3.20 \\ \hline
664 $R_{E}$&MG &2.15&43.64&41.38&2.26 \\ \hline
666 $EPSA$&EP &1.04 &22.14&20.73&1.41 \\ \hline
667 $R_{E-P}$&EP&1.92&39.40&56.33&-16.93\\ \hline
668 $R_{E}$&EP&1.92&38.10&56.35&-18.25\\ \hline
670 $EPSA$&LU&1.38&35.83&22.49&13.34 \\ \hline
671 $R_{E-P}$&LU&2.15&44.97&41.00&3.97 \\ \hline
672 $R_{E}$&LU&2.15&44.97&41.80&3.17 \\ \hline
674 $EPSA$&BT&1.31& 29.60&21.28&8.32\\ \hline
675 $R_{E-P}$&BT&2.13&45.60&49.84&-4.24\\ \hline
676 $R_{E}$&BT&2.13&44.90&55.16&-10.26\\ \hline
678 $EPSA$&SP&1.38&33.48&21.35&12.12\\ \hline
679 $R_{E-P}$&SP&2.10&45.69&43.60&2.09\\ \hline
680 $R_{E}$&SP&2.10&45.75&44.10&1.65\\ \hline
682 $EPSA$&FT&1.47&34.72&19.00&15.72 \\ \hline
683 $R_{E-P}$&FT&2.04&39.40&37.10&2.30\\ \hline
684 $R_{E}$&FT&2.04&39.35&37.70&1.65\\ \hline
686 \label{table:compareC}
687 % is used to refer this table in the text
689 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
690 while keeping the performance degradation as low as possible. Our algorithm always
691 gives the highest positive energy to performance trade-offs while Rauber and Rünger method
692 ($R_{E-P}$) gives in some time negative trade-offs such as in BT and
696 % \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/compare_class_A}
697 % \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/compare_class_B}
698 % \includegraphics[width=.328\textwidth]{fig/compare_class_C}
699 % \caption{Comparing our method to Rauber and Rünger methods}
700 % \label{fig:compare}
704 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.
706 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.
709 \section*{Acknowledgment}
710 This work has been supported by the Labex ACTION project (contract ``ANR-11-LABX-01-01'').Computations have been performed on the supercomputer facilities of the
711 Mésocentre de calcul de Franche-Comté. As a PhD student, M. Ahmed Fanfakh, would like to thank the University of
712 Babylon (Iraq) for supporting his work.
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728 %%% ispell-local-dictionary: "american"
731 % LocalWords: Fanfakh Charr FIXME Tianhe DVFS HPC NAS NPB SMPI Rauber's Rauber
732 % LocalWords: CMOS EQ EPSA Franche Comté Tflop Rünger IUT Maréchal Juin cedex