Processor Allocation on Cplant: Achieving General Processor Locality Using One-Dimensional Allocation Strategies

Technical Report · 01 July 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/800975· OSTI ID:800975

LEUNG, VITUS J ^[1]; ARKIN, ESTHER M; BENDER, MICHAEL A; BUNDE, DAVID; JOHNSTON, JEANETTE R; LAL, ALOK; MITCHELL, JOSEPH S.B.; PHILLIPS, CYNTHIA; SEIDEN, STEVEN S

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1. Sandia National Laboratories

The Computational Plant, or Cplant is a commodity-based supercomputer under development at Sandia National Laboratories. This paper describes resource-allocation strategies to achieve processor locality for parallel jobs in Cplant and other supercomputers. Users of Cplant and other Sandia supercomputers submit parallel jobs to a job queue. When a job is scheduled to run, it is assigned to a set of processors. To obtain maximum throughput, jobs should be allocated to localized clusters of processors to minimize communication costs and to avoid bandwidth contention caused by overlapping jobs. This paper introduces new allocation strategies and performance metrics based on space-tilling curves and one dimensional allocation strategies. These algorithms are general and simple. Preliminary simulations and Cplant experiments indicate that both space-filling curves and one-dimensional packing improve processor locality compared to the sorted free list strategy previously used on Cplant. These new allocation strategies are implemented in the new release of the Cplant System Software, Version 2.0, phased into the Cplant systems at Sandia by May 2002.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (US); Sandia National Labs., Livermore, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 800975
• Report Number(s): SAND2002-1488
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ALGORITHMS
MEMORY MANAGEMENT
PARALLEL PROCESSING
PERFORMANCE
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES
SUPERCOMPUTERS