Hayder, M. Ehtesham, Ierotheou, Constantinos S. and Keyes, David E. (2001) Three parallel programming paradigms: Comparisons on an archetypal PDE computation. In: Columbus, Frank, (ed.) Progress in Computer Research. Nova Science Publishers, Inc., Commack, NY, USA, pp. 17-38. ISBN 1-59033-011-0

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Abstract

Three paradigms for distributed-memory parallel computation that free the application programmer from the details of message passing are compared for an archetypal structured scientific computation -- a nonlinear, structured-grid partial differential equation boundary value problem -- using the same algorithm on the same hardware. All of the paradigms -- parallel languages represented by the Portland Group's HPF, (semi-)automated serial-to-parallel source-to-source translation represented by CAP-Tools from the University of Greenwich, and parallel libraries represented by Argonne's PETSc -- are found to be easy to use for this problem class, and all are reasonably effective in exploiting concurrency after a short learning curve. The level of involvement required by the application programmer under any paradigm includes specification of the data partitioning, corresponding to a geometrically simple decomposition of the domain of the PDE. Programming in SPMD style for the PETSc library requires writing only the routines that discretize the PDE and its Jacobian, managing subdomain-to-processor mappings (affine global-to-local index mappings), and interfacing to library solver routines. Programming for HPF requires a complete sequential implementation of the same algorithm as a starting point, introduction of concurrency through subdomain blocking (a task similar to the index mapping), and modest experimentation with rewriting loops to elucidate to the compiler the latent concurrency. Programming with CAPTools involves feeding the same sequential implementation to the CAPTools interactive parallelization system, and guiding the source-to-source code transformation by responding to various queries about quantities knowable only at runtime. Results representative of "the state of the practice" for a scaled sequence of structured grid problems are given on three of the most important contemporary high-performance platforms: the IBM SP, the SGI Origin 2000, and the CRAYY T3E.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	parallel programming paradigms, PDE computation
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics
Pre-2014 Departments:	School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis > Computational Science & Engineering Group School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Computer & Computational Science Research Group School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Computer Systems Technology
Related URLs:	Publisher
Last Modified:	14 Oct 2016 09:00
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/306

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