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Title: Visual Data-Analytics of Large-Scale Parallel Discrete-Event Simulations

Abstract

Parallel discrete-event simulation (PDES) is an important tool in the codesign of extreme-scale systems because PDES provides a cost-effective way to evaluate designs of highperformance computing systems. Optimistic synchronization algorithms for PDES, such as Time Warp, allow events to be processed without global synchronization among the processing elements. A rollback mechanism is provided when events are processed out of timestamp order. Although optimistic synchronization protocols enable the scalability of large-scale PDES, the performance of the simulations must be tuned to reduce the number of rollbacks and provide an improved simulation runtime. To enable efficient large-scale optimistic simulations, one has to gain insight into the factors that affect the rollback behavior and simulation performance. We developed a tool for ROSS model developers that gives them detailed metrics on the performance of their large-scale optimistic simulations at varying levels of simulation granularity. Model developers can use this information for parameter tuning of optimistic simulations in order to achieve better runtime and fewer rollbacks. In this work, we instrument the ROSS optimistic PDES framework to gather detailed statistics about the simulation engine. We have also developed an interactive visualization interface that uses the data collected by the ROSS instrumentation to understand the underlyingmore » behavior of the simulation engine. The interface connects real time to virtual time in the simulation and provides the ability to view simulation data at different granularities. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework by performing a visual analysis of the dragonfly network topology model provided by the CODES simulation framework built on top of ROSS. The instrumentation needs to minimize overhead in order to accurately collect data about the simulation performance. To ensure that the instrumentation does not introduce unnecessary overhead, we perform a scaling study that compares instrumented ROSS simulations with their noninstrumented counterparts in order to determine the amount of perturbation when running at different simulation scales.« less

Authors:
; ; ; ; ; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science - Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research
OSTI Identifier:
1392627
DOE Contract Number:  
AC02-06CH11357
Resource Type:
Conference
Resource Relation:
Conference: 7th International Workshop in Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems, 11/13/16 - 11/13/16, Salt Lake City, UT, US
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Citation Formats

Ross, Caitlin, Carothers, Christopher D., Mubarak, Misbah, Carns, Philip, Ross, Robert, Li, Jianping Kelvin, and Ma, Kwan-Liu. Visual Data-Analytics of Large-Scale Parallel Discrete-Event Simulations. United States: N. p., 2016. Web. doi:10.1109/PMBS.2016.014.
Ross, Caitlin, Carothers, Christopher D., Mubarak, Misbah, Carns, Philip, Ross, Robert, Li, Jianping Kelvin, & Ma, Kwan-Liu. Visual Data-Analytics of Large-Scale Parallel Discrete-Event Simulations. United States. https://doi.org/10.1109/PMBS.2016.014
Ross, Caitlin, Carothers, Christopher D., Mubarak, Misbah, Carns, Philip, Ross, Robert, Li, Jianping Kelvin, and Ma, Kwan-Liu. 2016. "Visual Data-Analytics of Large-Scale Parallel Discrete-Event Simulations". United States. https://doi.org/10.1109/PMBS.2016.014. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1392627.
@article{osti_1392627,
title = {Visual Data-Analytics of Large-Scale Parallel Discrete-Event Simulations},
author = {Ross, Caitlin and Carothers, Christopher D. and Mubarak, Misbah and Carns, Philip and Ross, Robert and Li, Jianping Kelvin and Ma, Kwan-Liu},
abstractNote = {Parallel discrete-event simulation (PDES) is an important tool in the codesign of extreme-scale systems because PDES provides a cost-effective way to evaluate designs of highperformance computing systems. Optimistic synchronization algorithms for PDES, such as Time Warp, allow events to be processed without global synchronization among the processing elements. A rollback mechanism is provided when events are processed out of timestamp order. Although optimistic synchronization protocols enable the scalability of large-scale PDES, the performance of the simulations must be tuned to reduce the number of rollbacks and provide an improved simulation runtime. To enable efficient large-scale optimistic simulations, one has to gain insight into the factors that affect the rollback behavior and simulation performance. We developed a tool for ROSS model developers that gives them detailed metrics on the performance of their large-scale optimistic simulations at varying levels of simulation granularity. Model developers can use this information for parameter tuning of optimistic simulations in order to achieve better runtime and fewer rollbacks. In this work, we instrument the ROSS optimistic PDES framework to gather detailed statistics about the simulation engine. We have also developed an interactive visualization interface that uses the data collected by the ROSS instrumentation to understand the underlying behavior of the simulation engine. The interface connects real time to virtual time in the simulation and provides the ability to view simulation data at different granularities. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework by performing a visual analysis of the dragonfly network topology model provided by the CODES simulation framework built on top of ROSS. The instrumentation needs to minimize overhead in order to accurately collect data about the simulation performance. To ensure that the instrumentation does not introduce unnecessary overhead, we perform a scaling study that compares instrumented ROSS simulations with their noninstrumented counterparts in order to determine the amount of perturbation when running at different simulation scales.},
doi = {10.1109/PMBS.2016.014},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1392627}, journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Sun Nov 13 00:00:00 EST 2016},
month = {Sun Nov 13 00:00:00 EST 2016}
}

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