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Toward a BLAS library truly portable across different accelerator types

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Abstract

Scientific applications are some of the most computationally demanding software pieces. Their core is usually a set of linear algebra operations, which may represent a significant part of the overall run-time of the application. BLAS libraries aim to solve this problem by exposing a set of highly optimized, reusable routines. There are several implementations specifically tuned for different types of computing platforms, including coprocessors. Some examples include the one bundled with the Intel MKL library, which targets Intel CPUs or Xeon Phi coprocessors, or the cuBLAS library, which is specifically designed for NVIDIA GPUs. Nowadays, computing nodes in many supercomputing clusters include one or more different coprocessor types. To fully exploit these platforms might require programs that can adapt at run-time to the chosen device type, hardwiring in the program the code needed to use a different library for each device type that can be selected. This also forces the programmer to deal with different interface particularities and mechanisms to manage the memory transfers of the data structures used as parameters. This paper presents a unified, performance-oriented, and portable interface for BLAS. This interface has been integrated into a heterogeneous programming model (Controllers) which supports groups of CPU cores, Xeon Phi accelerators, or NVIDIA GPUs in a transparent way. The contribution of this paper includes: An abstraction layer to hide programming differences between diverse BLAS libraries; new types of kernel classes to support the context manipulation of different external BLAS libraries; a new kernel selection policy that considers both programmer kernels and different external libraries; a complete new Controller library interface for the whole collection of BLAS routines. This proposal enables the creation of BLAS-based portable codes that can execute on top of different types of accelerators by changing a single initialization parameter. Our software internally exploits different preexisting and widely known BLAS library implementations, such as cuBLAS, MAGMA, or the one found in Intel MKL. It transparently uses the most appropriate library for the selected device. Our experimental results show that our abstraction does not introduce significant performance penalties, while achieving the desired portability.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by an FPI Grant (Formación de Personal Investigador) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCINN) to E.R-G. It has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad and by the ERDF program of the European Union: PCAS Project (TIN2017-88614-R), CAPAP-H6 (TIN2016-81840-REDT), and Junta de Castilla y Leon—FEDER Grant VA082P17 (PROPHET Project). We used the computing facilities of Extremadura Research Centre for Advanced Technologies (CETA-CIEMAT), funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). CETA-CIEMAT belongs to CIEMAT and the Government of Spain. Part of this work has been performed under the Project HPC-EUROPA3 (INFRAIA-2016-1-730897), with the support of the EC Research Innovation Action under the H2020 Programme; in particular, the author gratefully acknowledges the support of Dr. Christophe Dubach, the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh, and the computer resources and technical support provided by EPCC. The authors want to thank Dr. Ingo Wald for giving us the possibility of getting a KNL coprocessor.

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  1. Dpto. de Informática, Universidad de Valladolid, Paseo de Belén, 15, 47011, Valladolid, Spain

    Eduardo Rodriguez-Gutiez, Ana Moreton-Fernandez, Arturo Gonzalez-Escribano & Diego R. Llanos

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  1. Eduardo Rodriguez-Gutiez
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Correspondence to Arturo Gonzalez-Escribano.

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Rodriguez-Gutiez, E., Moreton-Fernandez, A., Gonzalez-Escribano, A. et al. Toward a BLAS library truly portable across different accelerator types. J Supercomput 75, 7101–7124 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-019-02925-3

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