Seminars & Events

Mathematics and Computer Science Division
"Scalable Task Parallel Programming in the Partitioned Global Address Space"

DATE: March 19, 2010
TIME: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
SPEAKER: Jim Dinan, The Ohio State University, Radix Postdoc Interviewee
LOCATION: Building 240 Seminar Room 1404 and 1405, Argonne National Laboratory
HOST: Pavan Balaji

Description:
Abstract:

Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) programming models such as Global Arrays (GA) and Unified Parallel C (UPC)provide the programmer with a global view of shared data that maybe partitioned across the physical memories of multiple nodes in a distributed memory cluster. This global address space supports asynchronous and irregular accesses to distributed shared data, however most PGAS models rely on expressing the computation using the regular, process-centric SPMD model. This disconnect between the irregular, asynchronous data model and the regular, process-centric computation model can pose significant challenges to the efficient and scalable implementation of irregular computations.

In this talk I will present Scioto, a scalable task parallel programming model that compliments existing PGAS memory models with a dynamic, task parallel view of the computation. Under the Scioto model, the programmer expresses their computation as a set of tasks that execute in the context of the global address space. The Scioto run time system manages parallel task execution and provides scalable run time services to enhance performance and program ability, including dynamic load balancing to manage irregularity and imbalance; task pushing and termination detection to support dynamic parallelism; and locality aware execution to allow the programmer to co-locate tasks with data to reduce communication overhead.

In addition to this work, I will briefly present ongoing and future research work in fault tolerance, including mechanisms for selective restart in the task parallel programming model; hybrid parallel programming models, including the MPI+UPC model; and PGAS work,including work on the Global Trees system for distributed shared linked data structures.

More Information:
The seminar is held in the TCS Conference Center, on the first floor level.
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