Reducing parallel overheads through dynamic serialization

If parallelism can be successfully exploited in a program, significant reductions in execution time can be achieved. However, if sections of the code are dominated by parallel overheads, the overall program performance can degrade. We propose a framework, based on an inspector-executor model, for identifying loops that are dominated by parallel overheads and dynamically serializing these loops. We implement this framework in the Polaris parallelizing compiler and evaluate two portable methods for classifying loops as profitable or unprofitable. We show that for six benchmark programs from the Perfect Club and SPEC 95 suites, parallel program execution times can be improved by as much as 85% on 16 processors of an Origin 2000