Title: A Two-Level Scheduling Strategy for optimising communications of data parallel programs in clusters

Authors: Ching-Hsien Hsu, Shih-Chang Chen

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Chung Hua University, 707, Sec. 2, WuFu Road, Hsinchu 30012, Taiwan. ' College of Engineering, Chung Hua University, 707, Sec. 2, WuFu Road, Hsinchu 30012, Taiwan

Abstract: Irregular data distribution and redistribution have been attracting attention recently since it can distribute different size of data segments to heterogeneous processors. High Performance Fortran Version 2 (HPF2) provides GEN_BLOCK distribution format which facilitates generalised block distributions. In this paper, we present a two-level scheduling method to minimise the communication cost in such operations. The proposed technique isolates local messages from inter-processor messages and schedules both kinds of messages in separated steps to efficiently avoid synchronisation delay. The proposed technique which has been implemented with the traditional scheduling approach yields improved schedules for heterogeneous processors environment.

Keywords: irregular data redistribution; GEN_BLOCK; two-level scheduling; communication optimisation; data parallel programming; clustering; scheduling strategy; irregular data distribution; communications; synchronisation delay.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2010.035537

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 2010 Vol.6 No.4, pp.263 - 269

Published online: 30 Sep 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article