Performance and Predictability of MPI and BSP Programs on the CRAY T3E

Abstract

It has been argued that message passing systems based on pairwise, rather than barrier, synchronization suffer from having no simple analytic cost for model prediction. The BSP Without Barriers Model (BSPWB) has been proposed as an alternative to the Bulk Synchronous Parallel (BSP) model for the analysis, design and prediction of asynchronous MPI programs. This work compares the prediction accuracy of the BSP and BSPWB models and the performance of their respective software libraries: Oxford BSPlib and MPI. Three test cases, representing three general problem solving paradigms are considered. These cases cover a wide range of requirements in communication, synchronisation and computation. The results obtained on the CRAY-T3E show not only a better scalability of MPI but that the performance of MPI programs can be predicted with the same exactitude than Oxford BSPlib programs.