并行通信算法的实用性研究

Analysis of the Practicality of Parallel Communication Algorithms

1 引言众所周知,结点间密集的通信操作会极大地降低并行应用的性能,因而对于并行系统来说,一个有效的通信操作库是极为重要的。常用的通信操作包括:广播,多点播送,路障同步,全对全通信等。 1994年,MPI标准的制定更加突出了并行通信问题的重要性。近年来,针对各种不同的并行系统都有大量的通信算法出现。有些算法的性能分析相当精确,但也有很多算法只是泛泛而谈,内容过于模糊,使算法的性能和应用范围不太清楚,系统设计者很难知道该通信算法是否符合其系统的具体特性和要求。

The significance of communication operations for scalable parallel systems has been well emphasized by the MPI standard. A lot of communication algorithms have been published for efficient communication operations in parallel and distributed systems recently. But a careful reading shows that different models are used and some do not fully consider the characteristic of underlying architecture in performance evaluation. Therefore comparisons are nearly impossible. This makes it difficult to select the best ones for practical implementation. In this paper,we emphasize on such problems. We analyzed some representative algorithms and give out the problems that should be considered to make such kind of algorithms more practical. We also give out some solutions.