Parallel Performance Project Research Paper

Research Paper

Modeling Computation and Communication Performance of Parallel Scientific Applications: A Case Study of the IBM SP2
Eric L. Boyd, Gheith Abandah, Hsien-Hsin Lee, and Edward S. Davidson
Technical Report CSE-TR-236-95, University of Michigan, May 95.

Abstract

A methodology for performance analysis of Massively Parallel Processors (MPPs) is presented. The IBM SP2 and some key routines of a finite element method application (FEMC) are used as a case study. A hierarchy of lower bounds on run time is developed for the POWER2 processor, using the MACS methodology developed in earlier work for uniprocessors and vector processors. Significantly, this hierarchy is extended to incorporate the effects of the memory hierarchy of each SP2 node and communication across the High Performance Switch (HPS) linking the nodes of the SP2. The performance models developed via this methodology facilitate explaining performance, identifying performance bottlenecks, and guiding application code improvements.