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A novel scalability metric about iso-area of performance for parallel computing

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Abstract

Scalability is an important performance metric of parallel computing, but the traditional scalability metrics only try to reflect the scalability for parallel computing from one side, which makes it difficult to fully measure its overall performance. This paper studies scalability metrics intensively and completely. From lots of performance parameters of parallel computing, a group of key ones is chosen and normalized. Further the area of Kiviat graph is used to characterize the overall performance of parallel computing. Thereby a novel scalability metric about iso-area of performance for parallel computing is proposed and the relationship between the new metric and the traditional ones is analyzed. Finally the novel metric is applied to address the scalability of the matrix multiplication Cannon’s algorithm under LogP model. The proposed metric is significant to improve parallel computing architecture and to tune parallel algorithm design.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National High-Tech Research and Development Plan of China under grant No. 2009AA012201; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No. 61363041, No. 61272107, No. 61202173 and No. 61103068; the Ph.D. Programs Foundation of Ministry of Education (grant No. 20110072120017), the Open Project Program of the State Key Lab of CAD&CG (Zhejiang University, grant No. A1311); the State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology (Nanjing University, grant No. KFKT2012B24), the Open Project Program of the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (grant No. 201103187); the Program of Shanghai Subject Chief Scientist under grant No. 10XD1404400; the special Fund for Fast Sharing of Science Paper in Net Era by CSTD under grant No. 20110740001.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China

    Huanliang Xiong, Guosun Zeng & Wei Wang

  2. Software College, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China

    Huanliang Xiong & Canghai Wu

  3. Tongji Branch, National Engineering and Technology Center of High Performance Computer, Shanghai, 201804, China

    Huanliang Xiong, Guosun Zeng & Wei Wang

  4. Carey Business School, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21202, USA

    Yuan Zeng

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  1. Huanliang Xiong
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  2. Guosun Zeng
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  3. Yuan Zeng
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  4. Wei Wang
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  5. Canghai Wu
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Correspondence to Huanliang Xiong.

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Xiong, H., Zeng, G., Zeng, Y. et al. A novel scalability metric about iso-area of performance for parallel computing. J Supercomput 68, 652–671 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-013-1057-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-013-1057-x

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