Bon Gen Gu

The KIPS Transactions:PartA, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 129-138, Jun. 2012
10.3745/KIPSTA.2012.19.3.129,   PDF Download:

Abstract

In distributed memory architectures like clusters, each node stores a portion of data. How data is distributed across nodes influences the performance of such systems. The data distribution scheme is the strategy to distribute data across nodes and realize parallel data processing. Due to various reasons such as maintenance, scale up, upgrade, etc., the performance of nodes in a cluster can often become non-identical. In such clusters, data distribution without considering performance cannot efficiently distribute data on nodes. In this paper, we propose a new data distribution scheme based on the number of cores in nodes. We use the number of cores as the performance factor. In our data distribution scheme, each node is allocated an amount of data proportional to the number of cores in it. We implement our data distribution scheme using the Chapel language. To show our data distribution is effective in reducing the execution time of parallel applications, we implement Mandelbrot Set and π-Calculation programs with our data distribution scheme, and compare the execution times on a cluster. Based on experimental results on clusters of 8-core and 16-core nodes, we demonstrate that data distribution based on the number of cores can contribute to a reduction in the execution times of parallel programs on clusters.

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