Subject: Re: Fw: Re: Low Level Benchmarks

From: Pat Worley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 13:52:49 -0500 (EST)

(From Charles Grassl)

> Last year we agreed (via email exchanges) that the Parkbench Low Level
> benchmark suite is not intended to be an -MPI- -test- suite.  There was a
> consensus that we intended to measure low level performance, not algorithm
> design or implementation. 

(From Bodo Parady via Mark Baker)

> The fear is that given the limitations of MPI/PVM, and to some degree
> of C and Fortran that accurate measures of these quantities may
> not be practical.
> 

I have a problem with attempting to determine low level communication
performance parameters independent of the communication library when it

a) is such a difficult task (I doubt that any portable program will be
   "accurate enough" across all the interesting platforms.) 

b) does not reflect what users would see in practice (since they will be
   using MPI or PVM in C or Fortran).

Am I missing something? The primary utility (for me) of the low level
benchmarks is to help explain the performance observed in the Parkbench
kernels and compact applications, or in my own codes. What level of accuracy
is required for such an application? Are more accurate or detailed
measurements useful or doable? 

Upon reflection, such low(er) level performance data would be useful to the
developer of a communication library, to help evaluate its performance, but
that appears to require system-specific measurements (and system-specific
interpretation). Is this really something we want to attempt?

Pat Worley

---

From: Pat Worley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 16:18:43 -0500 (EST)

In a private exchange, Charles Grassl made a comment that he may come to
regret: 

" We need more input, such as yours, as to what are the important parameters
  and what accuracy is needed. "

so here are some random comments. 

I have been organizing my own performance data over the last couple of weeks.
I never paid too much attention to the detailed output of my own ping-ping
and ping-pong tests because it was not the end product of the research. It
has been enlightening to look at it now. The entry point is

  http://www.epm.ornl.gov/~worley/studies/pt2pt.html

I tried a couple of different fitting techniques, but decided that fits told
me nothing that I was interested in. What I have found mildly interesting is
to measure statistics of the data, and try to build a performance model using
those. The difference is that the interpretation and value of the statistics 
(maximum observed bandwidth, time to send 0 length message, etc.)
are not functions of any model error. The problem with fitting the data is
that, no matter how often I tell myself that it is simply a compact
representation of the data, I keep wanting to use assign meaning to the model
parameters and use them in interplatform comparisons. 

In summary, I have changed my mind. I no longer support even simple fits
to the data unless well-defined statistical measures of the data are also
included (and emphasized).

Pat Worley

---

From: Mark Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 98 14:38:08 +0000

Dear Colleague,,

Firstly, I apologise for any cross-posting of this email.

If this CFP is not in your field we would appreciate you forwarding it
to your colleagues who may be in the field.

This CFP can be found at http://hpc-journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/CPE/Special/MPI-Java/

Regards

Dr Mark Baker
University of Portsmouth, UK

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call For Papers

Special Issue of Concurrency: Practice and Experience

Message Passing Interface-based Parallel Programming with Java

Guest Editors
Anthony Skjellum (MPI Software Technology, Inc.)
Mark Baker (University of Portsmouth)

A special issue of Concurrency: Practice and Experience (CPE) is being
planned for Fall of  1999. Papers submitted and accepted for this issue
will be published by John Wiley & Sons  Ltd. in the CPE Journal and in
addition will be made available electronically via the WWW. 

Background 
  
Recently there has been a great deal of interest in the idea that Java
may be a good language  for scientific and engineering computation, and
in particular for parallel computing. The  claims made on behalf of
Java, that it is simple, efficient and platform-neutral - a natural 
language for network programming - make it potentially attractive to
scientific programmers  hoping to harness the collective computational
power of networks of workstations and PCs,  or even of the Internet. 

A basic prerequisite for parallel programming is a good communication
API. Java comes with  various ready-made packages for communication,
notably an easy-to-use interface to BSD  sockets, and the Remote Method
Invocation (RMI) mechanism. Interesting as these  interfaces are, it is
questionable whether parallel programmers will find them especially 
convenient. Sockets and remote procedure calls have been around for
about as long as  parallel computing has been fashionable, and neither
of them has been popular in that field.  Both communication models are
optimized for client-server programming, whereas the  parallel computing
world is mainly concerned with "symmetric" communication, occurring in 
groups of interacting peers. 

This symmetric model of communication is captured in the successful
Message Passing  Interface standard (MPI), established a few years ago.
MPI directly supports the Single  Program Multiple Data (SPMD) model of
parallel computing, wherein a group of processes  cooperate by executing
identical program images on local data values. Reliable point-to-point 
communication is provided through a shared, group-wide communicator,
instead of socket  pairs. MPI allows numerous blocking, non-blocking,
buffered or synchronous communication  modes. It also provides a library
of true collective operations (broadcast is the most trivial  example).
An extended standard, MPI 2, allows for dynamic process creation and
access to  memory in remote processes. 

Call For Papers 

This is a call for papers about the designs, experience, and results
concerning the use of the  Message Passing Interface (MPI) with Java are
sought for a special issue of Concurrency  Practice and Experience.
Development of clear understanding of the opportunities,  challenges,
and state-of-the-art in scalable, peer-oriented messaging with Java are
of interest  and value to both the distributed computing and high
performance computing communities. 

Topics of interest for this special issue include but are not limited to: 

-- Practical systems that use MPI and Java to solve real distributed
   high performance  computing problems. 
-- Designs of systems for combining MPI-type functionality with Java. 
-- Approaches to APIs for object-oriented, group-oriented message passing with Java. 
-- Efforts to combine MPI with CORBA in a Java environment. 
-- Efforts to utilize aspects of the emerging MPI/RT standard are also
   of interest in the  Java context. 
-- Efforts to do MPI interoperability (IMPI) using Java. 
-- Issues and both tactical and strategic solutions concerning MPI-1 and
   MPI-2 standard  and features in conjunction with Java. 
-- Performance results and performance-enhancing techniques for such systems. 
-- Flexible frameworks and techniques for enabling High-Performance
   communication in Java

Timescales for Submission

There is a deadline of  15th December 1998 for submitted papers. Publication is currently 
scheduled for the third quarter of 1999. 
  
Activity 		Deadline
Call For Papers 	1st September 1998
Paper Submission	15th December 1998
Papers Returned		15th March 1999
Papers Approved		1st April 1999
Publication		Q3 1999

Further details about this special issue can be found at:

http://hpc-journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/CPE/Special/MPI-Java/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------
Dr Mark baker
CSM, University of Portsmouth, Hants, UK
Tel: +44 1705 844285	Fax: +44 1705 844006
E-mail: [email-masked]
Date: 09/11/98 - Time: 14:38:08
URL http://www.dcs.port.ac.uk/~mab/
-------------------------------------

---

From: "Subhash Saini" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 19:17:44 -0700

You are invited to attend the workshop (see below).

Best regards, subhash

==============================================================================

                           ***** REGISTER NOW *****

                         *** NO REGISTRATION FEE ***

              **** Last Day to Register is Sept. 23, 1998 ****

     "First NASA Workshop on Performance-Engineered Information Systems"
      -----------------------------------------------------------------

			     Sponsored by

               Numerical Aerospace Simulation Systems Division
                         NASA Ames Research Center
                      Moffett Field, California, USA

			  September 28-29, 1998

                   Workshop Chairman: Dr. Subhash Saini

                http://science.nas.nasa.gov/Services/Training

Invited  Speakers:
------------------
Adve, Vikram (Rice University)
Aida, K. (Tokyo Institute of Technology, JAPAN)
Bagrodia, Rajive (University of California, Los Angeles)
Becker, Monique (Institute Nationale des Tele. FRANCE)
Berman, Francine (University of California, San Diego)
Browne, James C. (University of Texas)
Darema, Frederica (U.S. National Science Foundation-CISE)
Dongarra, Jack (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
Feiereisen, Bill (NASA Ames Research Center)
Fox, Geoffrey (Syracuse University)
Gannon, Dennis (Indiana University)
Gerasoulis, Apostolos (Rutgers University)
Gunther, Neil J. (Performance Dynamics Company)
Hey, Tony (University of Southampton UK)
Hollingsworth, Jeff (University of Maryland)
Jain, Raj (Ohio State University)
Keahy, Kate (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
Mackenzie, Lewis M. (University of Glasgow, Scotland UK)
McCalpin, John (Silicon Graphics)
Menasce, Daniel A. (George Mason University)
Nudd, Graham (University of Warwick UK)
Reed, Dan (University of Illinois)
Saltz, Joel (University of Maryland)
Simmons, Margaret (San Diego Supercomputer Center)
Vernon, Mary (University of Wisconsin)

Topics include:
--------------

  - Performance-by-design techniques for high-performance distributed
    information systems
  - Large transients in packet-switched and circuit-switched networks
  - Workload characterization techniques
  - Integrated performance measurement, analysis, and prediction
  - Performance measurement and modeling in IPG
  - Performance models for threads and distributed objects
  - Application emulators and simulation models
  - Performance prediction engineering of Information Systems including IPG
  - Performance characterization of scientific and engineering applications
    of interest to NASA, DoE, DoD, and industry
  - Scheduling tools for performance prediction of parallel programs
  - Multi-resolution simulations for large-scale I/O-intensive applications
  - Capacity planning for Web performance: metrics, models, and methods

Contact: Marcia Redmond, [email-masked], (650) 604-4373

Registration: Advanced registration is required.

Registration Fee: NONE.

Registration Deadlines: Friday, September 23, 1998

There will be no onsite registration.

Contact: Send registration information and direct questions to
	 Marcia Redmond, [email-masked], (650) 604-4373.

DESCRIPTION:

The basic goal of performance modeling is to predict and understand the
performance of a computer program or set of programs on a computer
system. The applications of performance modeling are numerous,
including evaluation of algorithms, optimization of code
implementations, parallel library development, comparison of system
architectures, parallel system design, and procurement of new systems.
The most reliable technique for determining the performance of a
program on a computer system is to run and time the program multiple
times, but this can be very expensive and it rarely leads to any deep
understanding of the performance issues. It also does not provide
information on how performance will change under different
circumstances, for example with scaling the problem or system
parameters or porting to a different machine. The complexity of new
parallel supercomputer systems presents a daunting challenge to the
application scientists who must understand the system's behavior to
achieve a reasonable fraction of the peak performance. The NAS Parallel
Benchmarks (NPB) have exposed a large difference between peak and
achievable performance. Such a dismal performance is not surprising,
considering the complexity of these parallel distributed memory
systems.  At present, performance modeling, measurement, and analysis
tools are inadequate for distributed/networked systems such as
Information Power Grid (IPG). The purpose of performance-based
engineering is to develop new methods and tools that will enable
development of these information systems faster, better and cheaper.

================================================================================
                             Registration

     "First NASA Workshop on Performance-Engineered Information Systems"

Send the following information to [email-masked]

Name _____________________________________________

Organization _____________________________________

Street Address ___________________________________

City ____________________ State __________________

Zip/Mail Code ___________ Country ________________

Phone ___________________ Fax ____________________

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U.S. Citizen __________ Permanent Resident with Green Card ________

*******************************************************************************

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