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74 \title{Grid-enabled simulation of large-scale linear iterative solvers}
75 %\itshape{\journalnamelc}\footnotemark[2]}
77 \author{Charles Emile Ramamonjisoa\affil{1},
78 David Laiymani\affil{1},
79 Arnaud Giersch\affil{1},
80 Lilia Ziane Khodja\affil{2} and
81 Raphaël Couturier\affil{1}
86 Femto-ST Institute, DISC Department,
87 University of Franche-Comté,
89 Email:~\email{{charles.ramamonjisoa,david.laiymani,arnaud.giersch,raphael.couturier}@univ-fcomte.fr}\break
91 Department of Aerospace \& Mechanical Engineering,
92 Non Linear Computational Mechanics,
93 University of Liege, Liege, Belgium.
94 Email:~\email{l.zianekhodja@ulg.ac.be}
97 \begin{abstract} The behavior of multi-core applications is always a challenge
98 to predict, especially with a new architecture for which no experiment has been
99 performed. With some applications, it is difficult, if not impossible, to build
100 accurate performance models. That is why another solution is to use a simulation
101 tool which allows us to change many parameters of the architecture (network
102 bandwidth, latency, number of processors) and to simulate the execution of such
103 applications. The main contribution of this paper is to show that the use of a
104 simulation tool (here we have decided to use the SimGrid toolkit) can really
105 help developpers to better tune their applications for a given multi-core
108 In particular we focus our attention on two parallel iterative algorithms based
109 on the Multisplitting algorithm and we compare them to the GMRES algorithm.
110 These algorithms are used to solve linear systems. Two different variants of
111 the Multisplitting are studied: one using synchronoous iterations and another
112 one with asynchronous iterations. For each algorithm we have simulated
113 different architecture parameters to evaluate their influence on the overall
114 execution time. The obtain simulated results confirm the real results
115 previously obtained on different real multi-core architectures and also confirm
116 the efficiency of the asynchronous multisplitting algorithm compared to the
117 synchronous GMRES method.
121 %\keywords{Algorithm; distributed; iterative; asynchronous; simulation; simgrid;
123 \keywords{ Performance evaluation, Simulation, SimGrid, Synchronous and asynchronous iterations, Multisplitting algorithms}
127 \section{Introduction} The use of multi-core architectures to solve large
128 scientific problems seems to become imperative in many situations.
129 Whatever the scale of these architectures (distributed clusters, computational
130 grids, embedded multi-core,~\ldots) they are generally well adapted to execute
131 complex parallel applications operating on a large amount of data.
132 Unfortunately, users (industrials or scientists), who need such computational
133 resources, may not have an easy access to such efficient architectures. The cost
134 of using the platform and/or the cost of testing and deploying an application
135 are often very important. So, in this context it is difficult to optimize a
136 given application for a given architecture. In this way and in order to reduce
137 the access cost to these computing resources it seems very interesting to use a
138 simulation environment. The advantages are numerous: development life cycle,
139 code debugging, ability to obtain results quickly\dots{} In counterpart, the simulation results need to be consistent with the real ones.
141 In this paper we focus on a class of highly efficient parallel algorithms called
142 \emph{iterative algorithms}. The parallel scheme of iterative methods is quite
143 simple. It generally involves the division of the problem into several
144 \emph{blocks} that will be solved in parallel on multiple processing
145 units. Each processing unit has to compute an iteration to send/receive some
146 data dependencies to/from its neighbors and to iterate this process until the
147 convergence of the method. Several well-known studies demonstrate the
148 convergence of these algorithms~\cite{BT89,bahi07}. In this processing mode a
149 task cannot begin a new iteration while it has not received data dependencies
150 from its neighbors. We say that the iteration computation follows a
151 \textit{synchronous} scheme. In the asynchronous scheme a task can compute a new
152 iteration without having to wait for the data dependencies coming from its
153 neighbors. Both communication and computations are \textit{asynchronous}
154 inducing that there is no more idle time, due to synchronizations, between two
155 iterations~\cite{bcvc06:ij}. This model presents some advantages and drawbacks
156 that we detail in section~\ref{sec:asynchro} but even if the number of
157 iterations required to converge is generally greater than for the synchronous
158 case, it appears that the asynchronous iterative scheme can significantly
159 reduce overall execution times by suppressing idle times due to
160 synchronizations~(see~\cite{bahi07} for more details).
162 Nevertheless, in both cases (synchronous or asynchronous) it is very time
163 consuming to find optimal configuration and deployment requirements for a given
164 application on a given multi-core architecture. Finding good resource
165 allocations policies under varying CPU power, network speeds and loads is very
166 challenging and labor intensive~\cite{Calheiros:2011:CTM:1951445.1951450}. This
167 problematic is even more difficult for the asynchronous scheme where a small
168 parameter variation of the execution platform and of the application data can
169 lead to very different numbers of iterations to reach the converge and so to
170 very different execution times. In this challenging context we think that the
171 use of a simulation tool can greatly leverage the possibility of testing various
174 The main contribution of this paper is to show that the use of a simulation tool
175 (i.e. the SimGrid toolkit~\cite{SimGrid}) in the context of real parallel
176 applications (i.e. large linear system solvers) can help developers to better
177 tune their application for a given multi-core architecture. To show the validity
178 of this approach we first compare the simulated execution of the multisplitting
179 algorithm with the GMRES (Generalized Minimal Residual)
180 solver~\cite{saad86} in synchronous mode. The simulation results allow us to
181 determine which method to choose given a specified multi-core architecture.
183 \LZK{Pas trop convainquant comme argument pour valider l'approche de simulation. \\On peut dire par exemple: on a pu simuler différents algos itératifs à large échelle (le plus connu GMRES et deux variantes de multisplitting) et la simulation nous a permis (sans avoir le vrai matériel) de déterminer quelle serait la meilleure solution pour une telle configuration de l'archi ou vice versa.\\A revoir...}
184 \DL{OK : ajout d'une phrase précisant tout cela}
186 Moreover the obtained results on different simulated multi-core architectures
187 confirm the real results previously obtained on non simulated architectures.
188 More precisely the simulated results are in accordance (i.e. with the same order
189 of magnitude) with the works presented in~\cite{couturier15}, which show that the synchronous
190 multisplitting method is more efficient than GMRES for large scale clusters.
192 \LZK{Il n y a pas dans la partie expé cette comparaison et confirmation des
193 résultats entre la simulation et l'exécution réelle des algos sur les vrais
194 clusters.\\ Sinon on pourrait ajouter dans la partie expé une référence vers le
195 journal supercomput de krylov multi pour confirmer que cette méthode est
196 meilleure que GMRES sur les clusters large échelle.} \DL{OK ajout d'une phrase.
197 Par contre je n'ai pas la ref. Merci de la mettre}
199 Simulated results also confirm the efficiency of the asynchronous
200 multisplitting algorithm compared to the synchronous GMRES especially in case of
201 geographically distant clusters.
203 \LZK{P.S.: Pour tout le papier, le principal objectif n'est pas de faire des comparaisons entre des méthodes itératives!!\\Sinon, les deux algorithmes Krylov multisplitting synchrone et multisplitting asynchrone sont plus efficaces que GMRES sur des clusters à large échelle.\\Et préciser, si c'est vraiment le cas, que le multisplitting asynchrone est plus efficace et adapté aux clusters distants par rapport aux deux autres algos (je n'ai pas encore lu la partie expé)}
204 \DL{Tu as raison on s'est posé la question de garder ou non cette partie des résultats. On a décidé de la garder pour avoir plus de chose à montrer. J'ai essayer de clarifier un peu}
207 this way and with a simple computing architecture (a laptop) SimGrid allows us
208 to run a test campaign of a real parallel iterative applications on
209 different simulated multi-core architectures. To our knowledge, there is no
210 related work on the large-scale multi-core simulation of a real synchronous and
211 asynchronous iterative application.
213 This paper is organized as follows. Section~\ref{sec:asynchro} presents the
214 iteration model we use and more particularly the asynchronous scheme. In
215 section~\ref{sec:simgrid} the SimGrid simulation toolkit is presented.
216 Section~\ref{sec:04} details the different solvers that we use. Finally our
217 experimental results are presented in section~\ref{sec:expe} followed by some
218 concluding remarks and perspectives.
220 \LZK{Proposition d'un titre pour le papier: Grid-enabled simulation of large-scale linear iterative solvers.}
223 \section{The asynchronous iteration model and the motivations of our work}
226 Asynchronous iterative methods have been studied for many years theoritecally and
227 practically. Many methods have been considered and convergence results have been
228 proved. These methods can be used to solve, in parallel, fixed point problems
229 (i.e. problems for which the solution is $x^\star =f(x^\star)$. In practice,
230 asynchronous iterations methods can be used to solve, for example, linear and
231 non-linear systems of equations or optimization problems, interested readers are
232 invited to read~\cite{BT89,bahi07}.
234 Before using an asynchronous iterative method, the convergence must be
235 studied. Otherwise, the application is not ensure to reach the convergence. An
236 algorithm that supports both the synchronous or the asynchronous iteration model
237 requires very few modifications to be able to be executed in both variants. In
238 practice, only the communications and convergence detection are different. In
239 the synchronous mode, iterations are synchronized whereas in the asynchronous
240 one, they are not. It should be noticed that non blocking communications can be
241 used in both modes. Concerning the convergence detection, synchronous variants
242 can use a global convergence procedure which acts as a global synchronization
243 point. In the asynchronous model, the convergence detection is more tricky as
244 it must not synchronize all the processors. Interested readers can
245 consult~\cite{myBCCV05c,bahi07,ccl09:ij}.
247 The number of iterations required to reach the convergence is generally greater
248 for the asynchronous scheme (this number depends depends on the delay of the
249 messages). Note that, it is not the case in the synchronous mode where the
250 number of iterations is the same than in the sequential mode. In this way, the
251 set of the parameters of the platform (number of nodes, power of nodes,
252 inter and intra clusters bandwidth and latency, \ldots) and of the
253 application can drastically change the number of iterations required to get the
254 convergence. It follows that asynchronous iterative algorithms are difficult to
255 optimize since the financial and deployment costs on large scale multi-core
256 architecture are often very important. So, prior to delpoyment and tests it
257 seems very promising to be able to simulate the behavior of asynchronous
258 iterative algorithms. The problematic is then to show that the results produce
259 by simulation are in accordance with reality i.e. of the same order of
260 magnitude. To our knowledge, there is no study on this problematic.
264 SimGrid~\cite{SimGrid,casanova+legrand+quinson.2008.simgrid,casanova+giersch+legrand+al.2014.versatile} is a discrete event simulation framework to study the behavior of large-scale distributed computing platforms as Grids, Peer-to-Peer systems, Clouds and High Performance Computation systems. It is widely used to simulate and evaluate heuristics, prototype applications or even assess legacy MPI applications. It is still actively developed by the scientific community and distributed as an open source software.
266 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
267 % SimGrid~\cite{SimGrid,casanova+legrand+quinson.2008.simgrid,casanova+giersch+legrand+al.2014.versatile}
268 % is a simulation framework to study the behavior of large-scale distributed
269 % systems. As its name suggests, it emanates from the grid computing community,
270 % but is nowadays used to study grids, clouds, HPC or peer-to-peer systems. The
271 % early versions of SimGrid date back from 1999, but it is still actively
272 % developed and distributed as an open source software. Today, it is one of the
273 % major generic tools in the field of simulation for large-scale distributed
276 SimGrid provides several programming interfaces: MSG to simulate Concurrent
277 Sequential Processes, SimDAG to simulate DAGs of (parallel) tasks, and SMPI to
278 run real applications written in MPI~\cite{MPI}. Apart from the native C
279 interface, SimGrid provides bindings for the C++, Java, Lua and Ruby programming
280 languages. SMPI is the interface that has been used for the work described in
281 this paper. The SMPI interface implements about \np[\%]{80} of the MPI 2.0
282 standard~\cite{bedaride+degomme+genaud+al.2013.toward}, and supports
283 applications written in C or Fortran, with little or no modifications (cf Section IV - paragraph B).
285 Within SimGrid, the execution of a distributed application is simulated by a
286 single process. The application code is really executed, but some operations,
287 like communications, are intercepted, and their running time is computed
288 according to the characteristics of the simulated execution platform. The
289 description of this target platform is given as an input for the execution, by
290 means of an XML file. It describes the properties of the platform, such as
291 the computing nodes with their computing power, the interconnection links with
292 their bandwidth and latency, and the routing strategy. The scheduling of the
293 simulated processes, as well as the simulated running time of the application
294 are computed according to these properties.
296 To compute the durations of the operations in the simulated world, and to take
297 into account resource sharing (e.g. bandwidth sharing between competing
298 communications), SimGrid uses a fluid model. This allows users to run relatively fast
299 simulations, while still keeping accurate
300 results~\cite{bedaride+degomme+genaud+al.2013.toward,
301 velho+schnorr+casanova+al.2013.validity}. Moreover, depending on the
302 simulated application, SimGrid/SMPI allows to skip long lasting computations and
303 to only take their duration into account. When the real computations cannot be
304 skipped, but the results are unimportant for the simulation results, it is
305 also possible to share dynamically allocated data structures between
306 several simulated processes, and thus to reduce the whole memory consumption.
307 These two techniques can help to run simulations on a very large scale.
309 The validity of simulations with SimGrid has been asserted by several studies.
310 See, for example, \cite{velho+schnorr+casanova+al.2013.validity} and articles
311 referenced therein for the validity of the network models. Comparisons between
312 real execution of MPI applications on the one hand, and their simulation with
313 SMPI on the other hand, are presented in~\cite{guermouche+renard.2010.first,
314 clauss+stillwell+genaud+al.2011.single,
315 bedaride+degomme+genaud+al.2013.toward}. All these works conclude that
316 SimGrid is able to simulate pretty accurately the real behavior of the
318 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
320 \section{Two-stage multisplitting methods}
322 \subsection{Synchronous and asynchronous two-stage methods for sparse linear systems}
324 In this paper we focus on two-stage multisplitting methods in their both versions (synchronous and asynchronous)~\cite{Frommer92,Szyld92,Bru95}. These iterative methods are based on multisplitting methods~\cite{O'leary85,White86,Alefeld97} and use two nested iterations: the outer iteration and the inner iteration. Let us consider the following sparse linear system of $n$ equations in $\mathbb{R}$:
329 where $A$ is a sparse square and nonsingular matrix, $b$ is the right-hand side and $x$ is the solution of the system. Our work in this paper is restricted to the block Jacobi splitting method. This approach of multisplitting consists in partitioning the matrix $A$ into $L$ horizontal band matrices of order $\frac{n}{L}\times n$ without overlapping (i.e. sub-vectors $\{x_\ell\}_{1\leq\ell\leq L}$ are disjoint). Two-stage multisplitting methods solve the linear system~(\ref{eq:01}) iteratively as follows:
331 x_\ell^{k+1} = A_{\ell\ell}^{-1}(b_\ell - \displaystyle\sum^{L}_{\substack{m=1\\m\neq\ell}}{A_{\ell m}x^k_m}),\mbox{~for~}\ell=1,\ldots,L\mbox{~and~}k=1,2,3,\ldots
334 where $x_\ell$ are sub-vectors of the solution $x$, $b_\ell$ are the sub-vectors of the right-hand side $b$, and $A_{\ell\ell}$ and $A_{\ell m}$ are diagonal and off-diagonal blocks of matrix $A$ respectively. The iterations of these methods can naturally be computed in parallel such that each processor or cluster of processors is responsible for solving one splitting as a linear sub-system:
336 A_{\ell\ell} x_\ell = c_\ell,\mbox{~for~}\ell=1,\ldots,L,
339 where right-hand sides $c_\ell=b_\ell-\sum_{m\neq\ell}A_{\ell m}x_m$ are computed using the shared vectors $x_m$. In this paper, we use the well-known iterative method GMRES ({\it Generalized Minimal RESidual})~\cite{saad86} as an inner iteration to approximate the solutions of the different splittings arising from the block Jacobi multisplitting of matrix $A$. The algorithm in Figure~\ref{alg:01} shows the main key points of our block Jacobi two-stage method executed by a cluster of processors. In line~\ref{solve}, the linear sub-system~(\ref{eq:03}) is solved in parallel using GMRES method where $\MIG$ and $\TOLG$ are the maximum number of inner iterations and the tolerance threshold for GMRES respectively. The convergence of the two-stage multisplitting methods, based on synchronous or asynchronous iterations, has been studied by many authors for example~\cite{Bru95,bahi07}.
342 %\begin{algorithm}[t]
343 %\caption{Block Jacobi two-stage multisplitting method}
344 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
345 \Input $A_\ell$ (sparse matrix), $b_\ell$ (right-hand side)
346 \Output $x_\ell$ (solution vector)\vspace{0.2cm}
347 \State Set the initial guess $x^0$
348 \For {$k=1,2,3,\ldots$ until convergence}
349 \State $c_\ell=b_\ell-\sum_{m\neq\ell}A_{\ell m}x_m^{k-1}$
350 \State $x^k_\ell=Solve_{gmres}(A_{\ell\ell},c_\ell,x^{k-1}_\ell,\MIG,\TOLG)$\label{solve}
351 \State Send $x_\ell^k$ to neighboring clusters\label{send}
352 \State Receive $\{x_m^k\}_{m\neq\ell}$ from neighboring clusters\label{recv}
355 \caption{Block Jacobi two-stage multisplitting method}
360 In this paper, we propose two algorithms of two-stage multisplitting methods. The first algorithm is based on the asynchronous model which allows communications to be overlapped by computations and reduces the idle times resulting from the synchronizations. So in the asynchronous mode, our two-stage algorithm uses asynchronous outer iterations and asynchronous communications between clusters. The communications (i.e. lines~\ref{send} and~\ref{recv} in Figure~\ref{alg:01}) are performed by message passing using MPI non-blocking communication routines. The convergence of the asynchronous iterations is detected when all clusters have locally converged:
362 k\geq\MIM\mbox{~or~}\|x_\ell^{k+1}-x_\ell^k\|_{\infty }\leq\TOLM,
365 where $\MIM$ is the maximum number of outer iterations and $\TOLM$ is the tolerance threshold for the two-stage algorithm.
367 The second two-stage algorithm is based on synchronous outer iterations. We propose to use the Krylov iteration based on residual minimization to improve the slow convergence of the multisplitting methods. In this case, a $n\times s$ matrix $S$ is set using solutions issued from the inner iteration:
369 S=[x^1,x^2,\ldots,x^s],~s\ll n.
372 At each $s$ outer iterations, the algorithm computes a new approximation $\tilde{x}=S\alpha$ which minimizes the residual:
374 \min_{\alpha\in\mathbb{R}^s}{\|b-AS\alpha\|_2}.
377 The algorithm in Figure~\ref{alg:02} includes the procedure of the residual minimization and the outer iteration is restarted with a new approximation $\tilde{x}$ at every $s$ iterations. The least-squares problem~(\ref{eq:06}) is solved in parallel by all clusters using CGLS method~\cite{Hestenes52} such that $\MIC$ is the maximum number of iterations and $\TOLC$ is the tolerance threshold for this method (line~\ref{cgls} in Figure~\ref{alg:02}).
380 %\begin{algorithm}[t]
381 %\caption{Krylov two-stage method using block Jacobi multisplitting}
382 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
383 \Input $A_\ell$ (sparse matrix), $b_\ell$ (right-hand side)
384 \Output $x_\ell$ (solution vector)\vspace{0.2cm}
385 \State Set the initial guess $x^0$
386 \For {$k=1,2,3,\ldots$ until convergence}
387 \State $c_\ell=b_\ell-\sum_{m\neq\ell}A_{\ell m}x_m^{k-1}$
388 \State $x^k_\ell=Solve_{gmres}(A_{\ell\ell},c_\ell,x^{k-1}_\ell,\MIG,\TOLG)$
389 \State $S_{\ell,k\mod s}=x_\ell^k$
391 \State $\alpha = Solve_{cgls}(AS,b,\MIC,\TOLC)$\label{cgls}
392 \State $\tilde{x_\ell}=S_\ell\alpha$
393 \State Send $\tilde{x_\ell}$ to neighboring clusters
395 \State Send $x_\ell^k$ to neighboring clusters
397 \State Receive $\{x_m^k\}_{m\neq\ell}$ from neighboring clusters
400 \caption{Krylov two-stage method using block Jacobi multisplitting}
405 \subsection{Simulation of the two-stage methods using SimGrid toolkit}
408 One of our objectives when simulating the application in Simgrid is, as in real
409 life, to get accurate results (solutions of the problem) but also to ensure the
410 test reproducibility under the same conditions. According to our experience,
411 very few modifications are required to adapt a MPI program for the Simgrid
412 simulator using SMPI (Simulator MPI). The first modification is to include SMPI
413 libraries and related header files (smpi.h). The second modification is to
414 suppress all global variables by replacing them with local variables or using a
415 Simgrid selector called "runtime automatic switching"
416 (smpi/privatize\_global\_variables). Indeed, global variables can generate side
417 effects on runtime between the threads running in the same process and generated by
418 Simgrid to simulate the grid environment.
420 %\RC{On vire cette phrase ?} \RCE {Si c'est la phrase d'avant sur les threads, je pense qu'on peut la retenir car c'est l'explication du pourquoi Simgrid n'aime pas les variables globales. Si c'est pas bien dit, on peut la reformuler. Si c'est la phrase ci-apres, effectivement, on peut la virer si elle preterais a discussion}The
421 %last modification on the MPI program pointed out for some cases, the review of
422 %the sequence of the MPI\_Isend, MPI\_Irecv and MPI\_Waitall instructions which
423 %might cause an infinite loop.
426 \paragraph{Simgrid Simulator parameters}
427 \ \\ \noindent Before running a Simgrid benchmark, many parameters for the
428 computation platform must be defined. For our experiments, we consider platforms
429 in which several clusters are geographically distant, so there are intra and
430 inter-cluster communications. In the following, these parameters are described:
433 \item hostfile: hosts description file.
434 \item platform: file describing the platform architecture: clusters (CPU power,
435 \dots{}), intra cluster network description, inter cluster network (bandwidth bw,
436 latency lat, \dots{}).
437 \item archi : grid computational description (number of clusters, number of
438 nodes/processors for each cluster).
441 In addition, the following arguments are given to the programs at runtime:
444 \item maximum number of inner iterations $\MIG$ and outer iterations $\MIM$,
445 \item inner precision $\TOLG$ and outer precision $\TOLM$,
446 \item matrix sizes of the 3D Poisson problem: N$_{x}$, N$_{y}$ and N$_{z}$ on axis $x$, $y$ and $z$ respectively,
447 \item matrix diagonal value is fixed to $6.0$ for synchronous Krylov multisplitting experiments and $6.2$ for asynchronous block Jacobi experiments,
448 \item matrix off-diagonal value is fixed to $-1.0$,
449 \item number of vectors in matrix $S$ (i.e. value of $s$),
450 \item maximum number of iterations $\MIC$ and precision $\TOLC$ for CGLS method,
451 \item maximum number of iterations and precision for the classical GMRES method,
452 \item maximum number of restarts for the Arnorldi process in GMRES method,
453 \item execution mode: synchronous or asynchronous.
456 It should also be noticed that both solvers have been executed with the Simgrid selector \texttt{-cfg=smpi/running\_power} which determines the computational power (here 19GFlops) of the simulator host machine.
458 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
459 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
461 \section{Experimental Results}
464 In this section, experiments for both Multisplitting algorithms are reported. First the 3D Poisson problem used in our experiments is described.
466 \subsection{The 3D Poisson problem}
469 We use our two-stage algorithms to solve the well-known Poisson problem $\nabla^2\phi=f$~\cite{Polyanin01}. In three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates in $\mathbb{R}^3$, the problem takes the following form:
471 \frac{\partial^2}{\partial x^2}\phi(x,y,z)+\frac{\partial^2}{\partial y^2}\phi(x,y,z)+\frac{\partial^2}{\partial z^2}\phi(x,y,z)=f(x,y,z)\mbox{~in the domain~}\Omega
476 \phi(x,y,z)=0\mbox{~on the boundary~}\partial\Omega
478 where the real-valued function $\phi(x,y,z)$ is the solution sought, $f(x,y,z)$ is a known function and $\Omega=[0,1]^3$. The 3D discretization of the Laplace operator $\nabla^2$ with the finite difference scheme includes 7 points stencil on the computational grid. The numerical approximation of the Poisson problem on three-dimensional grid is repeatedly computed as $\phi=\phi^\star$ such that:
481 \phi^\star(x,y,z)=&\frac{1}{6}(\phi(x-h,y,z)+\phi(x,y-h,z)+\phi(x,y,z-h)\\&+\phi(x+h,y,z)+\phi(x,y+h,z)+\phi(x,y,z+h)\\&-h^2f(x,y,z))
485 until convergence where $h$ is the grid spacing between two adjacent elements in the 3D computational grid.
487 In the parallel context, the 3D Poisson problem is partitioned into $L\times p$ sub-problems such that $L$ is the number of clusters and $p$ is the number of processors in each cluster. We apply the three-dimensional partitioning instead of the row-by-row one in order to reduce the size of the data shared at the sub-problems boundaries. In this case, each processor is in charge of parallelepipedic block of the problem and has at most six neighbors in the same cluster or in distant clusters with which it shares data at boundaries.
489 \subsection{Study setup and simulation methodology}
491 First, to conduct our study, we propose the following methodology
492 which can be reused for any grid-enabled applications.\\
494 \textbf{Step 1}: Choose with the end users the class of algorithms or
495 the application to be tested. Numerical parallel iterative algorithms
496 have been chosen for the study in this paper. \\
498 \textbf{Step 2}: Collect the software materials needed for the experimentation.
499 In our case, we have two variants algorithms for the resolution of the
500 3D-Poisson problem: (1) using the classical GMRES; (2) and the Multisplitting
501 method. In addition, the Simgrid simulator has been chosen to simulate the
502 behaviors of the distributed applications. Simgrid is running in a virtual
503 machine on a simple laptop. \\
505 \textbf{Step 3}: Fix the criteria which will be used for the future
506 results comparison and analysis. In the scope of this study, we retain
507 on the one hand the algorithm execution mode (synchronous and asynchronous)
508 and on the other hand the execution time and the number of iterations to reach the convergence. \\
510 \textbf{Step 4 }: Set up the different grid testbed environments that will be
511 simulated in the simulator tool to run the program. The following architecture
512 has been configured in Simgrid : 2x16, 4x8, 4x16, 8x8 and 2x50. The first number
513 represents the number of clusters in the grid and the second number represents
514 the number of hosts (processors/cores) in each cluster. The network has been
515 designed to operate with a bandwidth equals to 10Gbits (resp. 1Gbits/s) and a
516 latency of 8.10$^{-6}$ seconds (resp. 5.10$^{-5}$) for the intra-clusters links
517 (resp. inter-clusters backbone links). \\
519 \textbf{Step 5}: Conduct an extensive and comprehensive testings
520 within these configurations by varying the key parameters, especially
521 the CPU power capacity, the network parameters and also the size of the
524 \textbf{Step 6} : Collect and analyze the output results.
526 \subsection{Factors impacting distributed applications performance in
529 When running a distributed application in a computational grid, many factors may
530 have a strong impact on the performance. First of all, the architecture of the
531 grid itself can obviously influence the performance results of the program. The
532 performance gain might be important theoretically when the number of clusters
533 and/or the number of nodes (processors/cores) in each individual cluster
536 Another important factor impacting the overall performance of the application
537 is the network configuration. Two main network parameters can modify drastically
538 the program output results:
540 \item the network bandwidth (bw=bits/s) also known as "the data-carrying
541 capacity" of the network is defined as the maximum of data that can transit
542 from one point to another in a unit of time.
543 \item the network latency (lat : microsecond) defined as the delay from the
544 start time to send a simple data from a source to a destination.
546 Upon the network characteristics, another impacting factor is the volume of data exchanged between the nodes in the cluster
547 and between distant clusters. This parameter is application dependent.
549 In a grid environment, it is common to distinguish, on the one hand, the
550 "intra-network" which refers to the links between nodes within a cluster and
551 on the other hand, the "inter-network" which is the backbone link between
552 clusters. In practice, these two networks have different speeds.
553 The intra-network generally works like a high speed local network with a
554 high bandwith and very low latency. In opposite, the inter-network connects
555 clusters sometime via heterogeneous networks components throuth internet with
556 a lower speed. The network between distant clusters might be a bottleneck
557 for the global performance of the application.
559 \subsection{Comparison of GMRES and Krylov Multisplitting algorithms in synchronous mode}
561 In the scope of this paper, our first objective is to analyze when the Krylov
562 Multisplitting method has better performance than the classical GMRES
563 method. With a synchronous iterative method, better performance means a
564 smaller number of iterations and execution time before reaching the convergence.
565 For a systematic study, the experiments should figure out that, for various
566 grid parameters values, the simulator will confirm the targeted outcomes,
567 particularly for poor and slow networks, focusing on the impact on the
568 communication performance on the chosen class of algorithm.
570 The following paragraphs present the test conditions, the output results
574 \subsubsection{Execution of the algorithms on various computational grid
575 architectures and scaling up the input matrix size}
581 \begin{tabular}{r c }
583 Grid Architecture & 2x16, 4x8, 4x16 and 8x8\\ %\hline
584 Network & N2 : bw=1Gbits/s - lat=5.10$^{-5}$ \\ %\hline
585 Input matrix size & N$_{x}$ x N$_{y}$ x N$_{z}$ =150 x 150 x 150\\ %\hline
586 - & N$_{x}$ x N$_{y}$ x N$_{z}$ =170 x 170 x 170 \\ \hline
588 \caption{Test conditions: various grid configurations with the input matix size N$_{x}$=150 or N$_{x}$=170 \RC{N2 n'est pas défini..}\RC{Nx est défini, Ny? Nz?}
589 \AG{La lettre 'x' n'est pas le symbole de la multiplication. Utiliser \texttt{\textbackslash times}. Idem dans le texte, les figures, etc.}}
598 In this section, we analyze the performance of algorithms running on various
599 grid configurations (2x16, 4x8, 4x16 and 8x8). First, the results in Figure~\ref{fig:01}
600 show for all grid configurations the non-variation of the number of iterations of
601 classical GMRES for a given input matrix size; it is not the case for the
602 multisplitting method.
604 \RC{CE attention tu n'as pas mis de label dans tes figures, donc c'est le bordel, j'en mets mais vérifie...}
605 \RC{Les légendes ne sont pas explicites...}
610 \includegraphics[width=100mm]{cluster_x_nodes_nx_150_and_nx_170.pdf}
612 \caption{Various grid configurations with the input matrix size N$_{x}$=150 and N$_{x}$=170\RC{idem}
613 \AG{Utiliser le point comme séparateur décimal et non la virgule. Idem dans les autres figures.}}
618 The execution times between the two algorithms is significant with different
619 grid architectures, even with the same number of processors (for example, 2x16
620 and 4x8). We can observ the low sensitivity of the Krylov multisplitting method
621 (compared with the classical GMRES) when scaling up the number of the processors
622 in the grid: in average, the GMRES (resp. Multisplitting) algorithm performs
623 $40\%$ better (resp. $48\%$) when running from 2x16=32 to 8x8=64 processors. \RC{pas très clair, c'est pas précis de dire qu'un algo perform mieux qu'un autre, selon quel critère?}
625 \subsubsection{Running on two different inter-clusters network speeds \\}
629 \begin{tabular}{r c }
631 Grid Architecture & 2x16, 4x8\\ %\hline
632 Network & N1 : bw=10Gbs-lat=8.10$^{-6}$ \\ %\hline
633 - & N2 : bw=1Gbs-lat=5.10$^{-5}$ \\
634 Input matrix size & N$_{x}$ x N$_{y}$ x N$_{z}$ =150 x 150 x 150\\ \hline
636 \caption{Test conditions: grid 2x16 and 4x8 with networks N1 vs N2}
641 These experiments compare the behavior of the algorithms running first on a
642 speed inter-cluster network (N1) and also on a less performant network (N2). \RC{Il faut définir cela avant...}
643 Figure~\ref{fig:02} shows that end users will reduce the execution time
644 for both algorithms when using a grid architecture like 4x16 or 8x8: the reduction is about $2$. The results depict also that when
645 the network speed drops down (variation of 12.5\%), the difference between the two Multisplitting algorithms execution times can reach more than 25\%.
646 %\RC{c'est pas clair : la différence entre quoi et quoi?}
651 %\begin{wrapfigure}{l}{100mm}
654 \includegraphics[width=100mm]{cluster_x_nodes_n1_x_n2.pdf}
655 \caption{Grid 2x16 and 4x8 with networks N1 vs N2
656 \AG{\np{8E-6}, \np{5E-6} au lieu de 8E-6, 5E-6}}
662 \subsubsection{Network latency impacts on performance}
666 \begin{tabular}{r c }
668 Grid Architecture & 2x16\\ %\hline
669 Network & N1 : bw=1Gbs \\ %\hline
670 Input matrix size & N$_{x}$ x N$_{y}$ x N$_{z}$ =150 x 150 x 150\\ \hline
672 \caption{Test conditions: network latency impacts}
680 \includegraphics[width=100mm]{network_latency_impact_on_execution_time.pdf}
681 \caption{Network latency impacts on execution time
687 According to the results of Figure~\ref{fig:03}, a degradation of the network
688 latency from $8.10^{-6}$ to $6.10^{-5}$ implies an absolute time increase of
689 more than $75\%$ (resp. $82\%$) of the execution for the classical GMRES
690 (resp. Krylov multisplitting) algorithm. In addition, it appears that the
691 Krylov multisplitting method tolerates more the network latency variation with a
692 less rate increase of the execution time.\RC{Les 2 précédentes phrases me
693 semblent en contradiction....} Consequently, in the worst case ($lat=6.10^{-5
694 }$), the execution time for GMRES is almost the double than the time of the
695 Krylov multisplitting, even though, the performance was on the same order of
696 magnitude with a latency of $8.10^{-6}$.
698 \subsubsection{Network bandwidth impacts on performance}
702 \begin{tabular}{r c }
704 Grid Architecture & 2x16\\ %\hline
705 Network & N1 : bw=1Gbs - lat=5.10$^{-5}$ \\ %\hline
706 Input matrix size & N$_{x}$ x N$_{y}$ x N$_{z}$ =150 x 150 x 150\\ \hline \\
708 \caption{Test conditions: Network bandwidth impacts\RC{Qu'est ce qui varie ici? Il n'y a pas de variation dans le tableau}}
715 \includegraphics[width=100mm]{network_bandwith_impact_on_execution_time.pdf}
716 \caption{Network bandwith impacts on execution time
717 \AG{``Execution time'' avec un 't' minuscule}. Idem autres figures.}
721 The results of increasing the network bandwidth show the improvement of the
722 performance for both algorithms by reducing the execution time (see
723 Figure~\ref{fig:04}). However, in this case, the Krylov multisplitting method
724 presents a better performance in the considered bandwidth interval with a gain
725 of $40\%$ which is only around $24\%$ for the classical GMRES.
727 \subsubsection{Input matrix size impacts on performance}
731 \begin{tabular}{r c }
733 Grid Architecture & 4x8\\ %\hline
734 Network & N2 : bw=1Gbs - lat=5.10$^{-5}$ \\
735 Input matrix size & N$_{x}$ = From 40 to 200\\ \hline
737 \caption{Test conditions: Input matrix size impacts}
744 \includegraphics[width=100mm]{pb_size_impact_on_execution_time.pdf}
745 \caption{Problem size impacts on execution time}
749 In these experiments, the input matrix size has been set from $N_{x} = N_{y}
750 = N_{z} = 40$ to $200$ side elements that is from $40^{3} = 64.000$ to $200^{3}
751 = 8,000,000$ points. Obviously, as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:05}, the execution
752 time for both algorithms increases when the input matrix size also increases.
753 But the interesting results are:
755 \item the drastic increase ($10$ times) of the number of iterations needed to
756 reach the convergence for the classical GMRES algorithm when the matrix size
757 go beyond $N_{x}=150$; \RC{C'est toujours pas clair... ok le nommbre d'itérations est 10 fois plus long mais la suite de la phrase ne veut rien dire}
758 \item the classical GMRES execution time is almost the double for $N_{x}=140$
759 compared with the Krylov multisplitting method.
762 These findings may help a lot end users to setup the best and the optimal
763 targeted environment for the application deployment when focusing on the problem
764 size scale up. It should be noticed that the same test has been done with the
765 grid 2x16 leading to the same conclusion.
767 \subsubsection{CPU Power impacts on performance}
771 \begin{tabular}{r c }
773 Grid architecture & 2x16\\ %\hline
774 Network & N2 : bw=1Gbs - lat=5.10$^{-5}$ \\ %\hline
775 Input matrix size & N$_{x}$ = 150 x 150 x 150\\ \hline
777 \caption{Test conditions: CPU Power impacts}
783 \includegraphics[width=100mm]{cpu_power_impact_on_execution_time.pdf}
784 \caption{CPU Power impacts on execution time}
788 Using the Simgrid simulator flexibility, we have tried to determine the impact
789 on the algorithms performance in varying the CPU power of the clusters nodes
790 from $1$ to $19$ GFlops. The outputs depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:06} confirm the
791 performance gain, around $95\%$ for both of the two methods, after adding more
794 \DL{il faut une conclusion sur ces tests : ils confirment les résultats déjà
795 obtenus en grandeur réelle. Donc c'est une aide précieuse pour les dev. Pas
796 besoin de déployer sur une archi réelle}
799 \subsection{Comparing GMRES in native synchronous mode and the multisplitting algorithm in asynchronous mode}
801 The previous paragraphs put in evidence the interests to simulate the behavior
802 of the application before any deployment in a real environment. In this
803 section, following the same previous methodology, our goal is to compare the
804 efficiency of the multisplitting method in \textit{ asynchronous mode} compared with the
805 classical GMRES in \textit{synchronous mode}.
807 The interest of using an asynchronous algorithm is that there is no more
808 synchronization. With geographically distant clusters, this may be essential.
809 In this case, each processor can compute its iteration freely without any
810 synchronization with the other processors. Thus, the asynchronous may
811 theoretically reduce the overall execution time and can improve the algorithm
814 \RC{la phrase suivante est bizarre, je ne comprends pas pourquoi elle vient ici}
815 In this section, Simgrid simulator tool has been successfully used to show
816 the efficiency of the multisplitting in asynchronous mode and to find the best
817 combination of the grid resources (CPU, Network, input matrix size, \ldots ) to
818 get the highest \textit{"relative gain"} (exec\_time$_{GMRES}$ /
819 exec\_time$_{multisplitting}$) in comparison with the classical GMRES time.
822 The test conditions are summarized in the table~\ref{tab:07}: \\
826 \begin{tabular}{r c }
828 Grid Architecture & 2x50 totaling 100 processors\\ %\hline
829 Processors Power & 1 GFlops to 1.5 GFlops\\
830 Intra-Network & bw=1.25 Gbits - lat=5.10$^{-5}$ \\ %\hline
831 Inter-Network & bw=5 Mbits - lat=2.10$^{-2}$\\
832 Input matrix size & N$_{x}$ = From 62 to 150\\ %\hline
833 Residual error precision & 10$^{-5}$ to 10$^{-9}$\\ \hline \\
835 \caption{Test conditions: GMRES in synchronous mode vs Krylov Multisplitting in asynchronous mode}
839 Again, comprehensive and extensive tests have been conducted with different
840 parameters as the CPU power, the network parameters (bandwidth and latency)
841 and with different problem size. The relative gains greater than $1$ between the
842 two algorithms have been captured after each step of the test. In
843 Figure~\ref{fig:07} are reported the best grid configurations allowing
844 the multisplitting method to be more than $2.5$ times faster than the
845 classical GMRES. These experiments also show the relative tolerance of the
846 multisplitting algorithm when using a low speed network as usually observed with
847 geographically distant clusters through the internet.
849 % use the same column width for the following three tables
850 \newlength{\mytablew}\settowidth{\mytablew}{\footnotesize\np{E-11}}
851 \newenvironment{mytable}[1]{% #1: number of columns for data
852 \renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.3}%
853 \begin{tabular}{|>{\bfseries}r%
854 |*{#1}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\mytablew}|}}}{%
861 % \caption{Relative gain of the multisplitting algorithm compared with the classical GMRES}
866 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 50 & 50 & 50 & 50 & 50 \\
869 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 \\
872 & 1 & 1 & 1 & 1.5 & 1.5 & 1.5 & 1.5 & 1 & 1.5 & 1.5 \\
875 & 62 & 62 & 62 & 100 & 100 & 110 & 120 & 130 & 140 & 150 \\
878 & \np{E-5} & \np{E-8} & \np{E-9} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11} & \np{E-11}\\
881 & 2.52 & 2.55 & 2.52 & 2.57 & 2.54 & 2.53 & 2.51 & 2.58 & 2.55 & 2.54 \\
885 \caption{Relative gain of the multisplitting algorithm compared with the classical GMRES
886 \AG{C'est un tableau, pas une figure}}
895 %\section*{Acknowledgment}
897 This work is partially funded by the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
899 \bibliographystyle{wileyj}
900 \bibliography{biblio}
909 %%% ispell-local-dictionary: "american"