Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Synchronizing compute node time bases in a parallel computer

Patent ·
OSTI ID:1166739

Synchronizing time bases in a parallel computer that includes compute nodes organized for data communications in a tree network, where one compute node is designated as a root, and, for each compute node: calculating data transmission latency from the root to the compute node; configuring a thread as a pulse waiter; initializing a wakeup unit; and performing a local barrier operation; upon each node completing the local barrier operation, entering, by all compute nodes, a global barrier operation; upon all nodes entering the global barrier operation, sending, to all the compute nodes, a pulse signal; and for each compute node upon receiving the pulse signal: waking, by the wakeup unit, the pulse waiter; setting a time base for the compute node equal to the data transmission latency between the root node and the compute node; and exiting the global barrier operation.

Research Organization:
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Assignee:
International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY)
Patent Number(s):
8,924,763
Application Number:
13/327,107
OSTI ID:
1166739
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (5)

Internal Timer Synchronization for Parallel Event Tracing book January 2008
A Clock Synchronization Strategy for Minimizing Clock Variance at Runtime in High-End Computing Environments conference October 2010
Probabilistic internal clock synchronization conference January 1994
Replay-Based Synchronization of Timestamps in Event Traces of Massively Parallel Applications
  • Becker, Daniel; Linford, John C.; Rabenseifner, Rolf
  • 2008 International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops (ICPP-W), 2008 International Conference on Parallel Processing - Workshops https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPP-W.2008.17
conference September 2008
The accuracy of the clock synchronization achieved by TEMPO in Berkeley UNIX 4.3BSD journal July 1989