Title :
The effect of application characteristics on performance in a parallel architecture
Author :
Guzman, Adolfo ; Krall, E.J. ; McGehearty, Patrick F. ; Bagherzadeh, Nader
Author_Institution :
Adv. Comput. Archit. Program, MCC, Austin, TX, USA
Abstract :
A shared-memory, hierarchical, clustered architecture is reported. Measurements presented (including speedups) were obtained by running six different symbolic application kernels with varying architectural parameters. The results and graphs shown highlight the manner in which application characteristics place limits on achievable parallel performance, given particular architectural features. The discussion covers processor starvation, fine-grain parallelism, uneven loads, foreign reference, cost scheduling and indeterminate computation with respect to the applications chosen. These measurements provide understanding of some of the interactions that take place between the architectural parameters and the specific applications and suggest ways to improve the architecture. To date, the architecture has shown reasonable speedups on the chosen applications.<>
Keywords :
parallel architectures; parallel programming; performance evaluation; symbol manipulation; application characteristics; architectural parameters; computational speedup; cost scheduling; fine-grain parallelism; foreign reference; indeterminate computation; parallel architecture; performance measurement; processor starvation; shared-memory hierarchical clustered architecture; symbolic application kernels; uneven loads; Application software; Computational modeling; Computer architecture; Concurrent computing; Costs; Kernel; Parallel architectures; Parallel processing; Processor scheduling; Velocity measurement;
Conference_Titel :
System Sciences, 1988. Vol.I. Architecture Track, Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Hawaii International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Kailua-Kona, HI, USA
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-0841-2
DOI :
10.1109/HICSS.1988.11762
