Accurate Analytical Models for Message Passing on Multi-core Clusters

Memory hierarchy on multi-core clusters has two-fold characteristics: vertical memory hierarchy and horizontal memory hierarchy. Vertical memory hierarchy has been modeled by previous work (e.g. memory logP, log_nP, log₃P etc.) to analyze middlewarepsilas effects on point-to-point communication with different message sizes and message strides; Horizontal memory hierarchy has become more prominent due to distinct performance among three levels of communication in a multi-core cluster: intra-CMP, inter-CMP and inter-node, which should adequately be considered. Derived from log_nP and log₃P models, new analytical models mlognP and its reduction 2log_{2,3}P are proposed to unitedly abstract memory hierarchy on multi-core clusters in vertical and horizontal levels. The results of performance evaluation show that it is indispensable to incorporate horizontal memory hierarchy into new models suitable for multi-core clusters, and 2log_{2,3}P model can predict communication costs for message passing on multi-core clusters more accurately than log₃P model.