6216194
The implementation and evaluation of fusion and contraction in array languages
Array languages such as Fortran 90, HPF and ZPL have many benefits in simplifying array-based computations and expressing data parallelism. However, they can suffer large performance penalties because they introduce intermediate arrays---both at the source level and during the compilation process---which increase memory usage and pollute the cache. Most compilers address this problem by simply scalarizing the array language and relying on a scalar language compiler to perform loop fusion and array contraction. We instead show that there are advantages to performing a form of loop fusion and array contraction at the array level. This paper describes this approach and explains its advantages. Experimental results show that our scheme typically yields runtime improvements of greater than 20% and sometimes up to 400%. In addition, it yields superior memory use when compared against commercial compilers and exhibits comparable memory use when compared with scalar languages. We also explore the interaction between these transformations and communication optimizations.
27000155
Towards a Machine-Independent Solution of Sparse Cholesky Factorization
9009444
A Portable Parallel N-Body Solver
We present parallel solutions for direct and fast n-body solvers written in the ZPL language. We describe the direct solver, compare its performance against a sequential C program, and show performance results for two very different parallel machines; the KSR-2 and the Paragon. We also discuss the implementation of the fast solver in ZPL, including factors pertinent to data movement.
5795237
The portable parallel implementation of two novel mathematical biology algorithms in ZPL
This paper shows that mathematical models of biological pattern formation are ideally suited to data parallelism. We present two new algorithms, one for simulating the dynamic structure of fibroblasts, and the other for studying the self-organization of motile bacteria. We describe implementations of these algorithms using a high level data parallel language called ZPL, and we give performance results for the Kendall Square Research KSR-2 and the Intel Paragon that include comparisons against sequential Fortran.
7870525
Adaptive History-Based Memory Schedulers
As memory performance becomes increasingly important to overall system performance, the need to carefully schedule memory operations also increases. This paper presents a new approach to memory scheduling that considers the history of recently scheduled operations. This history-based approach provides two conceptual advantages: (1) it allows the scheduler to better reason about the delays associated with its scheduling decisions, and (2) it allows the scheduler to select operations so that they match the program's mixture of Reads and Writes, thereby avoiding certain bottlenecks within the memory controller. We evaluate our solution using a cycle-accurate simulator for the recently announced IBM Power5. When compared with an in-order scheduler, our solution achieves IPC improvements of 10.9% on the NAS benchmarks and 63% on the data-intensive Stream benchmarks. Using microbenchmarks, we illustrate the growing importance of memory scheduling in the context of CMP's, hardware controlled prefetching, and faster CPU speeds.
15307682
Accommodating polymorphic data decompositions in explicitly parallel programs
Explicitly parallel programs have the potential for greater performance than their implicitly parallel counterparts. However, this benefit can be accompanied by additional programming difficulties. We address one particular problem that has implications for both scalability and portability: the need for programs do accommodate diverse data decompositions. We explain why programs with explicit communication have difficulties in handling changes in data decomposition, and we present a solution to this problem which involves the notions of derivative functions and configuration parameters. We illustrate the technique by using three different data decompositions to solve the Modified Gram-Schmidt method on four parallel machines.<<ETX>>
15658650
A reinforcement neuro-fuzzy combiner for multiobjective control
This paper proposes a neuro-fuzzy combiner (NFC) with reinforcement learning capability for solving multiobjective control problems. The proposed NFC can combine n existing low-level controllers in a hierarchical way to form a multiobjective fuzzy controller. It is assumed that each low-level (fuzzy or nonfuzzy) controller has been well designed to serve a particular objective. The role of the NFC is to fuse the n actions decided by the n low-level controllers and determine a proper action acting on the environment (plant) at each time step. Hence, the NFC can combine low-level controllers and achieve multiple objectives (goals) at once. The NFC acts like a switch that chooses a proper action from the actions of low-level controllers according to the feedback information from the environment. In fact, the NFC is a soft switch; it allows more than one low-level actions to be active with different degrees through fuzzy combination at each time step. An NFC can be designed by the trial-and-error approach if enough a priori knowledge is available, or it can be obtained by supervised learning if precise input/output training data are available. In the more practical cases when there is no instructive teaching information available, the NFC can learn by itself using the proposed reinforcement learning scheme. Adopted with reinforcement learning capability, the NFC can learn to achieve desired multiobjectives simultaneously through the rough reinforcement feedback from the environment, which contains only critic information such as "success (good)" or "failure (bad)" for each desired objective. Computer simulations have been conducted to illustrate the performance and applicability of the proposed architecture and learning scheme.
13951248
A survey on evaluating and realizing IS/IT benefits in Taiwanese b2bec companies
A number of issues have emerged from the analysis of the data collected via a survey conducted in Taiwanese B2BEC companies. The results show relatively high usage of IS/IT investment evaluation and benefits realization methodologies, and yet, these methodologies were generally not used effectively within the responding organizations. Most of these organizations were not yet mature in terms of their IT. However, there was a clear association between level of IT maturity and both wide and effective use of methodologies for IS/IT investment evaluation and benefits management.
7645082
An annotation language for optimizing software libraries
This paper introduces an annotation language and a compiler that together can customize a library implementation for specific application needs. Our approach is distinguished by its ability to exploit high level, domain-specific information in the customization process. In particular, the annotations provide semantic information that enables our compiler to analyze and optimize library operations as if they were primitives of a domain-specific language. Thus, our approach yields many of the performance benefits of domain-specific languages, without the effort of developing a new compiler for each domain.
This paper presents the annotation language, describes its role in optimization, and illustrates the benefits of the overall approach. Using a partially implemented compiler, we show how our system can significantly improve the performance of two applications written using the PLAPACK parallel linear algebra library.
11473366
Class-Based Latency Assurances for Web Servers
This paper presents a fuzzy control approach for process assignment in order to guarantee absolute percentile delay in web servers. Comparing with mean delay used in previous works, percentile delay introduces strong nonlinearities to the plant; it is therefore difficult to achieve satisfactory performance by a linear controller, which is commonly used to guarantee mean delay performance. In this paper we propose a fuzzy controller. Its key feature is independence of the plant and robust to model uncertainty, which is very suitable to the strong nonlinear web servers. The experiments have demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed fuzzy controller in handing the variety of requests.
8448956
From Single to Multi-document Summarization
NeATS is a multi-document summarization system that attempts to extract relevant or interesting portions from a set of documents about some topic and present them in coherent order. NeATS is among the best performers in the large scale summarization evaluation DUC 2001.