Introduction

Introduction
What is Parallel Architecture?
Why Parallel Architecture?
Evolution and Convergence of Parallel Architectures
Fundamental Design Issues

What is Parallel Architecture?

A parallel computer is a collection of processing elements
that cooperate to solve large problems fast
Some broad issues:

Resource Allocation:

Data access, Communication and Synchronization

how large a collection?

how powerful are the elements?
how much memory?
how do the elements cooperate and communicate?
how are data transmitted between processors?
what are the abstractions and primitives for cooperation?

Performance and Scalability

how does it all translate into performance?

how does it scale?
3

Why Study Parallel Architecture?

Role of a computer architect:
To design and engineer the various levels of a computer system
to maximize performance and programmability within limits of
technology and cost.

Parallelism:
Provides alternative to faster clock for performance
Applies at all levels of system design
Is a fascinating perspective from which to view architecture
Is increasingly central in information processing

Why Study it Today?

History: diverse and innovative organizational structures, often
tied to novel programming models
Rapidly maturing under strong technological constraints
The killer micro is ubiquitous
Laptops and supercomputers are fundamentally similar!
Technological trends cause diverse approaches to converge

Technological trends make parallel computing inevitable

In the mainstream

Need to understand fundamental principles and design tradeoffs,

not just taxonomies

Naming, Ordering, Replication, Communication performance

5

Inevitability of Parallel Computing

Application demands: Our insatiable need for computing cycles

Scientific computing: CFD, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, ...

General-purpose computing: Video, Graphics, CAD, Databases, TP...

Technology Trends

Number of transistors on chip growing rapidly

Clock rates expected to go up only slowly

Architecture Trends

Instruction-level parallelism valuable but limited

Coarser-level parallelism, as in MPs, the most viable approach

Economics
Current trends:

Todays microprocessors have multiprocessor support

Servers and workstations becoming MP: Sun, SGI, DEC, COMPAQ!...
Tomorrows microprocessors are multiprocessors
6

Application Trends
Demand for cycles fuels advances in hardware, and vice-versa

Cycle drives exponential increase in microprocessor performance

Drives parallel architecture harder: most demanding applications

Range of performance demands

Need range of system performance with progressively increasing cost

Platform pyramid

Goal of applications in using parallel machines: Speedup

Speedup (p processors) =

Performance (p processors)
Performance (1 processor)

For a fixed problem size (input data set), performance = 1/time

Speedup fixed problem (p processors) =

Time (1 processor)
Time (p processors)
7

Scientific Computing Demand

Engineering Computing Demand

Large parallel machines a mainstay in many industries

Petroleum (reservoir analysis)

Automotive (crash simulation, drag analysis, combustion efficiency),

Aeronautics (airflow analysis, engine efficiency, structural mechanics,

electromagnetism),

Computer-aided design

Pharmaceuticals (molecular modeling)

Visualization

in all of the above

entertainment (films like Toy Story)
architecture (walk-throughs and rendering)

Financial modeling (yield and derivative analysis)

etc.
9

Applications: Speech and Image Processing

10 GIPS

1 GIPS
Telephone
Number
Recognition

100 MIPS

10 MIPS

200 Words
Isolated Speech
Recognition

1,000 Words
Continuous
Speech
Recognition

5,000 Words
Continuous
Speech
Recognition
HDTVReceiver

CIF Video
ISDN-CD Stereo
Receiver

CELP
Speech Coding

Speaker
Verication
1 MIPS

1980

Sub-Band
Speech Coding

1985

1990

1995

Also CAD, Databases, . . .

100 processors gets you 10 years, 1000 gets you 20 !
10

Learning Curve for Parallel Applications

AMBER molecular dynamics simulation program

Starting point was vector code for Cray-1
145 MFLOP on Cray90, 406 for final version on 128-processor Paragon,
891 on 128-processor Cray T3D

11

Commercial Computing
Also relies on parallelism for high end

Scale not so large, but use much more wide-spread

Computational power determines scale of business that can be handled

Databases, online-transaction processing, decision support, data

mining, data warehousing ...
TPC benchmarks (TPC-C order entry, TPC-D decision support)

Explicit scaling criteria provided

Size of enterprise scales with size of system

Problem size no longer fixed as p increases, so throughput is used as a
performance measure (transactions per minute or tpm)

12

TPC-C Results for March 1996

25,000

Throughput (tpmC)

20,000

Tandem Himalaya
DEC Alpha
SGI PowerChallenge
HP PA
IBM PowerPC
Other

15,000

10,000

5,000

20

40

60

80

100

120

Number of processors

Parallelism is pervasive
Small to moderate scale parallelism very important
Difficult to obtain snapshot to compare across vendor platforms
13

Summary of Application Trends

Transition to parallel computing has occurred for scientific and
engineering computing
In rapid progress in commercial computing

Database and transactions as well as financial

Usually smaller-scale, but large-scale systems also used

Desktop also uses multithreaded programs, which are a lot like

parallel programs
Demand for improving throughput on sequential workloads

Greatest use of small-scale multiprocessors

Solid application demand exists and will increase

14

Technology Trends

Performance

100

Supercomputers

10
Mainframes
Microprocessors
Minicomputers
1

0.1
1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

The natural building block for multiprocessors is now also about the fastest!
15

General Technology Trends

Microprocessor performance increases 50% - 100% per year
Transistor count doubles every 3 years
DRAM size quadruples every 3 years
Huge investment per generation is carried by huge commodity market
180
160
140
DEC
alpha

120
100
80
60
40
20

MIPS
Sun 4 M/120
260

0
1987

1988

MIPS
M2000

1989

IBM
RS6000
540

1990

Integer

FP

HP 9000
750

1991

1992

Not that single-processor performance is plateauing, but that

parallelism is a natural way to improve it.
16

Technology: A Closer Look

Basic advance is decreasing feature size ( )

Circuits become either faster or lower in power

Die size is growing too

Clock rate improves roughly proportional to improvement in

Number of transistors improves like 2 (or faster)

Performance > 100x per decade; clock rate 10x, rest transistor count
How to use more transistors?

Parallelism in processing

Proc

Locality in data access

multiple operations per cycle reduces CPI

avoids latency and reduces CPI
also improves processor utilization

Interconnect

Both need resources, so tradeoff

Fundamental issue is resource distribution, as in uniprocessors

17

Clock Frequency Growth Rate

Clock rate (MHz)

1,000

100

10

i8086

R10000

Pentium100

i80386

i80286

i8080

i8008

i4004

0.1
1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

30% per year

18

Transistor Count Growth Rate

100,000,000

Transistors

10,000,000
1,000,000
i80286

100,000

R10000

Pentium

i80386
R3000
R2000

i8086

10,000

i8080

i8008

i4004

1,000
1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

100 million transistors on chip by early 2000s A.D.

Transistor count grows much faster than clock rate
- 40% per year, order of magnitude more contribution in 2 decades
19

Similar Story for Storage

Divergence between memory capacity and speed more pronounced

Capacity increased by 1000x from 1980-95, speed only 2x

Gigabit DRAM by c. 2000, but gap with processor speed much greater

Larger memories are slower, while processors get faster

Need to transfer more data in parallel
Need deeper cache hierarchies
How to organize caches?

Parallelism increases effective size of each level of hierarchy,

without increasing access time
Parallelism and locality within memory systems too
New designs fetch many bits within memory chip; follow with fast
pipelined transfer across narrower interface
Buffer caches most recently accessed data

Disks too: Parallel disks plus caching

20

Architectural Trends
Architecture translates technologys gifts to performance and
capability
Resolves the tradeoff between parallelism and locality

Current microprocessor: 1/3 compute, 1/3 cache, 1/3 off-chip connect

Tradeoffs may change with scale and technology advances

Understanding microprocessor architectural trends

Helps build intuition about design issues or parallel machines

Shows fundamental role of parallelism even in sequential computers

Four generations of architectural history: tube, transistor, IC, VLSI

Here focus only on VLSI generation

Greatest delineation in VLSI has been in type of parallelism exploited

21

Architectural Trends
Greatest trend in VLSI generation is increase in parallelism

Up to 1985: bit level parallelism: 4-bit -> 8 bit -> 16-bit

Mid 80s to mid 90s: instruction level parallelism

slows after 32 bit

adoption of 64-bit now under way, 128-bit far (not performance issue)
great inflection point when 32-bit micro and cache fit on a chip
pipelining and simple instruction sets, + compiler advances (RISC)
on-chip caches and functional units => superscalar execution
greater sophistication: out of order execution, speculation, prediction
to deal with control transfer and latency problems

Next step: thread level parallelism

22

Phases in VLSI Generation

Bit-level parallelism

Instruction-level

Thread-level (?)

100,000,000

10,000,000

1,000,000

R10000

Pentium

Transistors

i80386

i80286

100,000

R2000

R3000

i8086

10,000
i8080
i8008

i4004

1,000
1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

How good is instruction-level parallelism?

Thread-level needed in microprocessors?
23

Architectural Trends: ILP

Reported speedups for superscalar processors

Horst, Harris, and Jardine [1990] ......................

1.37

Wang and Wu [1988] ..........................................

1.70

Smith, Johnson, and Horowitz [1989] ..............

2.30

Murakami et al. [1989] ........................................

2.55

Chang et al. [1991] .............................................

2.90

Jouppi and Wall [1989] ......................................

3.20

Lee, Kwok, and Briggs [1991] ...........................

3.50

Wall [1991] ..........................................................

Melvin and Patt [1991] .......................................

Butler et al. [1991] .............................................

17+

Large variance due to difference in

application domain investigated (numerical versus non-numerical)

capabilities of processor modeled
24

ILP Ideal Potential

3

25

2.5

20

2
Speedup

Fraction of total cycles (%)

30

15

1.5

10

0.5

0
0

6+

Number of instructions issued

10

15

Instructions issued per cycle

Infinite resources and fetch bandwidth, perfect branch prediction and renaming
real caches and non-zero miss latencies
25

Results of ILP Studies

Concentrate on parallelism for 4-issue machines

perfect branch prediction
4x
1 branch unit/real prediction
3x

2x

1x

Jouppi_89

Smith_89 Murakami_89 Chang_91

Butler_91

Melvin_91

Realistic studies show only 2-fold speedup

Recent studies show that more ILP needs to look across threads
26

Architectural Trends: Bus-based MPs

Micro on a chip makes it natural to connect many to shared memory
dominates server and enterprise market, moving down to desktop

Faster processors began to saturate bus, then bus technology advanced

today, range of sizes for bus-based systems, desktop to large servers
70
CRAY CS6400

Sun
E10000

60

Number of processors

50

40
SGI Challenge

Symmetry81

Sequent B2100
30

SE60

Sun E6000

SE70

Sun SC2000

20

SC2000E
SGI PowerChallenge/XL

AS8400
Symmetry21

Sequent B8000

SE10

10

Power
SGI PowerSeries
0
1984

1986

1988

SS690MP 140
SS690MP 120
1990

1992

SS1000

SE30
SS1000E

AS2100 HP K400
SS20
SS10
1994

1996

P-Pro

1998

No. of processors in fully configured commercial shared-memory systems

27

Bus Bandwidth
100,000

Sun E10000

Shared bus bandwidth (MB/s)

10,000

SGI
Sun E6000
PowerCh
AS8400
XL
CS6400

SGI Challenge
HPK400
SC2000E
AS2100
SC2000
P-Pro
SS1000E
SS1000
SS20
SS690MP 120

SE70/SE30
SS10/
SS690MP 140
SE10/

1,000

SE60

Symmetry81/21

100

SGI PowerSeries

Power

Sequent B2100

Sequent
B8000
10
1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

28

Economics
Commodity microprocessors not only fast but CHEAP
Development cost is tens of millions of dollars (5-100 typical)
BUT, many more are sold compared to supercomputers

Crucial to take advantage of the investment, and use the

commodity building block

Exotic parallel architectures no more than special-purpose

Multiprocessors being pushed by software vendors (e.g. database)

as well as hardware vendors
Standardization by Intel makes small, bus-based SMPs commodity
Desktop: few smaller processors versus one larger one?

Multiprocessor on a chip

29

Consider Scientific Supercomputing

Proving ground and driver for innovative architecture and techniques

Market smaller relative to commercial as MPs become mainstream

Dominated by vector machines starting in 70s

Microprocessors have made huge gains in floating-point performance

high clock rates

pipelined floating point units (e.g., multiply-add every cycle)
instruction-level parallelism
effective use of caches (e.g., automatic blocking)

Plus economics

Large-scale multiprocessors replace vector supercomputers

Well under way already

30

Raw Uniprocessor Performance: LINPACK

10,000

CRAY n = 1,000
CRAY n = 100
Micro n = 1,000
Micro n = 100

1,000

T94

LINPACK (MFLOPS)

C90

100

DEC 8200

Ymp

Xmp/416

Xmp/14se

IBM Power2/990
MIPS R4400

DEC Alpha

HP9000/735

DEC Alpha AXP

HP 9000/750

CRAY 1s

IBM RS6000/540

10

MIPS M/2000

MIPS M/120

Sun 4/260
1
1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

31

Raw Parallel Performance: LINPACK

10,000
MPP peak
CRAY peak

ASCI Red

LINPACK (GFLOPS)

1,000

Paragon XP/S MP
(6768)

Paragon XP/S MP
(1024)
T3D
CM-5

100

T932(32)
Paragon XP/S
CM-200
CM-2

Ymp/832(8)
1

C90(16)

Delta

10

iPSC/860
nCUBE/2(1024)

Xmp /416(4)

0.1
1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1996

Even vector Crays became parallel: X-MP (2-4) Y-MP (8), C-90 (16), T94 (32)
Since 1993, Cray produces MPPs too (T3D, T3E)
32

500 Fastest Computers

350

Number of systems

300

313

200

284

239

250
187

110

106

100

0
11/93

MPP
PVP
SMP

198

150

50

319

63
11/94

11/95

106

73

11/96

33

Summary: Why Parallel Architecture?

Increasingly attractive

Economics, technology, architecture, application demand

Increasingly central and mainstream

Parallelism exploited at many levels
Instruction-level parallelism
Multiprocessor servers
Large-scale multiprocessors (MPPs)

Focus of this class: multiprocessor level of parallelism

Same story from memory system perspective

Increase bandwidth, reduce average latency with many local memories

Wide range of parallel architectures make sense

Different cost, performance and scalability

34

Convergence of Parallel Architectures

History
Historically, parallel architectures tied to programming models
Divergent architectures, with no predictable pattern of growth.

Application Software
Systolic
Arrays

System
Software
Architecture

SIMD
Message Passing

Dataflow

Shared Memory

Uncertainty of direction paralyzed parallel software development!

36

Today
Extension of computer architecture to support communication
and cooperation
OLD: Instruction Set Architecture
NEW: Communication Architecture

Defines

Critical abstractions, boundaries, and primitives (interfaces)

Organizational structures that implement interfaces (hw or sw)

Compilers, libraries and OS are important bridges today

37

Modern Layered Framework

CAD

Database

Multiprogramming

Shared
address

Scientific modeling
Message
passing

Data
parallel

Compilation
or library
Operating systems support
Communication hardware

Parallel applications
Programming models

Communication abstraction
User/system boundary
Hardware/software boundary

Physical communication medium

38

Programming Model
What programmer uses in coding applications
Specifies communication and synchronization
Examples:
Multiprogramming: no communication or synch. at program level
Shared address space: like bulletin board
Message passing: like letters or phone calls, explicit point to point

Data parallel: more regimented, global actions on data

Implemented with shared address space or message passing

39

Communication Abstraction
User level communication primitives provided

Realizes the programming model

Mapping exists between language primitives of programming model

and these primitives

Supported directly by hw, or via OS, or via user sw

Lot of debate about what to support in sw and gap between layers
Today:

Hw/sw interface tends to be flat, i.e. complexity roughly uniform

Compilers and software play important roles as bridges today

Technology trends exert strong influence

Result is convergence in organizational structure

Relatively simple, general purpose communication primitives

40

Communication Architecture
= User/System Interface + Implementation
User/System Interface:

Comm. primitives exposed to user-level by hw and system-level sw

Implementation:

Organizational structures that implement the primitives: hw or OS

How optimized are they? How integrated into processing node?
Structure of network

Goals:

Performance
Broad applicability
Programmability
Scalability
Low Cost

41

Evolution of Architectural Models

Historically machines tailored to programming models

Prog. model, comm. abstraction, and machine organization lumped

together as the architecture

Evolution helps understand convergence

Identify core concepts

Shared Address Space

Message Passing
Data Parallel
Others:

Dataflow
Systolic Arrays

Examine programming model, motivation, intended applications, and

contributions to convergence
42

Shared Address Space Architectures

Any processor can directly reference any memory location

Communication occurs implicitly as result of loads and stores

Convenient:

Location transparency
Similar programming model to time-sharing on uniprocessors
Except processes run on different processors
Good throughput on multiprogrammed workloads

Naturally provided on wide range of platforms

History dates at least to precursors of mainframes in early 60s

Wide range of scale: few to hundreds of processors

Popularly known as shared memory machines or model

Ambiguous: memory may be physically distributed among processors

43

Shared Address Space Model

Process: virtual address space plus one or more threads of control
Portions of address spaces of processes are shared
Virtual address spaces for a
collection of processes communicating
via shared addresses
Load

P1

Machine physical address space

Pn pr i v at e

Pn

P2

Common physical
addresses

P0
St or e
Shared portion
of address space

Private portion
of address space

P2 pr i vat e

P1 pr i vat e
P0 pr i vat e

Writes

to shared address visible to other threads (in other processes

too)
Natural extension of uniprocessors model: conventional memory
operations for comm.; special atomic operations for synchronization
OS uses shared memory to coordinate processes

44

Communication Hardware
Also natural extension of uniprocessor
Already have processor, one or more memory modules and I/O
controllers connected by hardware interconnect of some sort
I/O
devices

Mem

Mem

Mem

Interconnect

Processor

Mem

I/O ctrl

I/O ctrl

Interconnect

Processor

Memory capacity increased by adding modules, I/O by controllers

Add processors for processing!
For higher-throughput multiprogramming, or parallel programs
45

History
Mainframe approach

Motivated by multiprogramming
Extends crossbar used for mem bw and I/O
Originally processor cost limited to small

later, cost of crossbar

P
P
I/O

Bandwidth scales with p

I/O
High incremental cost; use multistage instead

C
C
M

Minicomputer approach

Almost all microprocessor systems have bus

Motivated by multiprogramming, TP
I/O
Used heavily for parallel computing
C
Called symmetric multiprocessor (SMP)
Latency larger than for uniprocessor
Bus is bandwidth bottleneck

caching is key: coherence problem

I/O
C

Low incremental cost

46

Example: Intel Pentium Pro Quad

CPU

P-Pro
module

256-KB
Interrupt
L2 $
controller
Bus interface

P-Pro
module

P-Pro
module

PCI
bridge
PCI bus

PCI
I/O
cards

PCI
bridge
PCI bus

P-Pro bus (64-bit data, 36-bit address, 66 MHz)

Memory
controller
MIU
1-, 2-, or 4-way
interleaved
DRAM

All coherence and

multiprocessing glue in
processor module
Highly integrated, targeted at
high volume
Low latency and bandwidth

47

Example: SUN Enterprise

P
$

P
$

$2

$2

CPU/mem
cards

Mem ctrl

Bus interface/switch

Gigaplane bus (256 data, 41 address, 83 MHz)

I/O cards
2 FiberChannel

SBUS

SBUS

SBUS

100bT, SCSI

Bus interface

16 cards of either type: processors + memory, or I/O

All memory accessed over bus, so symmetric
Higher bandwidth, higher latency bus

48

Scaling Up
M

Network

Network

Dance hall

M $

M $

M $
P

Distributed memory

Problem is interconnect: cost (crossbar) or bandwidth (bus)

Dance-hall: bandwidth still scalable, but lower cost than crossbar

Distributed memory or non-uniform memory access (NUMA)

latencies to memory uniform, but uniformly large

Construct shared address space out of simple message transactions
across a general-purpose network (e.g. read-request, read-response)

Caching shared (particularly nonlocal) data?

49

Example: Cray T3E

External I/O
P
$

Mem

Mem
ctrl
and NI

XY

Switch

Scale up to 1024 processors, 480MB/s links

Memory controller generates comm. request for nonlocal references
No hardware mechanism for coherence (SGI Origin etc. provide this)

50

Message Passing Architectures

Complete computer as building block, including I/O

Communication via explicit I/O operations

Programming model: directly access only private address space

(local memory), comm. via explicit messages (send/receive)
High-level block diagram similar to distributed-memory SAS

But comm. integrated at IO level, neednt be into memory system

Like networks of workstations (clusters), but tighter integration
Easier to build than scalable SAS

Programming model more removed from basic hardware operations

Library or OS intervention

51

Message-Passing Abstraction
Match

ReceiveY, P, t
AddressY

Send X, Q, t

AddressX

Local process
address space

Process P

Process Q

Send specifies buffer to be transmitted and receiving process

Recv specifies sending process and application storage to receive into
Memory to memory copy, but need to name processes
Optional tag on send and matching rule on receive
User process names local data and entities in process/tag space too
In simplest form, the send/recv match achieves pairwise synch event

Local process
address space

Other variants too

Many overheads: copying, buffer management, protection

52

Evolution of Message-Passing Machines

101

001

100

000

111

Early machines: FIFO on each link

011

110

010

Hw close to prog. Model; synchronous ops

Replaced by DMA, enabling non-blocking ops

Buffered by system at destination until recv

Diminishing role of topology

Store&forward routing: topology important

Introduction of pipelined routing made it less so
Cost is in node-network interface
Simplifies programming
53

Example: IBM SP-2

Power 2
CPU

IBM SP-2 node

L2 $

Memory bus

General interconnection
network formed from
8-port switches

4-way
interleaved
DRAM

Memory
controller

MicroChannel bus

I/O

DMA
i860

NI

DRAM

NIC

Made out of essentially complete RS6000 workstations

Network interface integrated in I/O bus (bw limited by I/O
bus)

54

Example Intel Paragon

i860

i860

L1 $

L1 $

Intel
Paragon
node

Memory bus (64-bit, 50 MHz)

Mem
ctrl

DMA
Driver

Sandia s Intel Paragon XP/S-based Supercomputer

2D grid network
with processing node
attached to every switch

NI

4-way
interleaved
DRAM

8 bits,
175 MHz,
bidirectional

55

Toward Architectural Convergence

Evolution and role of software have blurred boundary

Send/recv supported on SAS machines via buffers

Can construct global address space on MP using hashing

Page-based (or finer-grained) shared virtual memory

Hardware organization converging too

Tighter NI integration even for MP (low-latency, high-bandwidth)

At lower level, even hardware SAS passes hardware messages

Even clusters of workstations/SMPs are parallel systems

Emergence of fast system area networks (SAN)

Programming models distinct, but organizations converging

Nodes connected by general network and communication assists

Implementations also converging, at least in high-end machines

56

Data Parallel Systems

Programming model

Operations performed in parallel on each element of data structure

Logically single thread of control, performs sequential or parallel steps

Conceptually, a processor associated with each data element

Architectural model

Array of many simple, cheap processors with little memory each

Processors dont sequence through instructions

Attached to a control processor that issues instructions

Specialized and general communication, cheap global synchronization

Original motivations
Matches simple differential equation solvers
Centralize high cost of instruction
fetch/sequencing

Control
processor

PE

PE

PE

PE

PE

PE

PE

PE

PE

57

Application of Data Parallelism

Each PE contains an employee record with his/her salary
If salary > 100K then

salary = salary *1.05

else
salary = salary *1.10

Logically, the whole operation is a single step

Some processors enabled for arithmetic operation, others disabled

Other examples:
Finite differences, linear algebra, ...
Document searching, graphics, image processing, ...
Some recent machines:

Thinking Machines CM-1, CM-2 (and CM-5)

Maspar MP-1 and MP-2,
58

Evolution and Convergence

Rigid control structure (SIMD in Flynn taxonomy)

SISD = uniprocessor, MIMD = multiprocessor

Popular when cost savings of centralized sequencer high

60s when CPU was a cabinet

Replaced by vectors in mid-70s

More flexible w.r.t. memory layout and easier to manage

Revived in mid-80s when 32-bit datapath slices just fit on chip

No longer true with modern microprocessors

Other reasons for demise

Simple, regular applications have good locality, can do well anyway

Loss of applicability due to hardwiring data parallelism

MIMD machines as effective for data parallelism and more general

Prog. model converges with SPMD (single program multiple data)

Contributes need for fast global synchronization

Structured global address space, implemented with either SAS or MP

59

Dataflow Architectures
Represent computation as a graph of essential dependences

Logical processor at each node, activated by availability of operands

Message (tokens) carrying tag of next instruction sent to next processor
Tag compared with others in matching store; match fires execution
1

a = (b +1) (b c)
d
= c e
f = a d

Dataflow graph
a

Network
f

Token
store

Program
store

Waiting
Matching

Instruction
fetch

Execute

Form
token

Network

Token queue
Network

60

Evolution and Convergence

Key characteristics

Ability to name operations, synchronization, dynamic scheduling

Problems

Operations have locality across them, useful to group together

Handling complex data structures like arrays
Complexity of matching store and memory units
Expose too much parallelism (?)

Converged to use conventional processors and memory

Support for large, dynamic set of threads to map to processors

Typically shared address space as well
But separation of progr. model from hardware (like data-parallel)

Lasting contributions:

Integration of communication with thread (handler) generation

Tightly integrated communication and fine-grained synchronization
Remained useful concept for software (compilers etc.)
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Systolic Architectures

Replace single processor with array of regular processing elements

Orchestrate data flow for high throughput with less memory access
M

PE
PE

PE

PE

Different from pipelining

Nonlinear array structure, multidirection data flow, each PE may

have (small) local instruction and data memory

Different from SIMD: each PE may do something different

Initial motivation: VLSI enables inexpensive special-purpose chips
Represent algorithms directly by chips connected in regular pattern

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Systolic Arrays (contd.)

Example: Systolic array for 1-D convolution
y(i) = w1 x(i) + w2 x(i + 1) + w3 x(i + 2) + w4 x(i + 3)
x8

x7

x6

x5

x4

x3

x2

w3

w4
y3

y2

yin

x
w

xout

xout = x
x = xin
yout = yin + w xin

yout

Enable variety of algorithms on same hardware

But dedicated interconnect channels

w1

Practical realizations (e.g. iWARP) use quite general processors

w2

y1

xin

x1

Data transfer directly from register to register across channel

Specialized, and same problems as SIMD

General purpose systems work well for same algorithms (locality etc.)
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Convergence: Generic Parallel Architecture

A generic modern multiprocessor
Network

Communication
assist (CA)

Mem

$
P

Node: processor(s), memory system, plus communication assist

Network interface and communication controller

Scalable network
Convergence allows lots of innovation, now within framework
Integration of assist with node, what operations, how efficiently...
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Fundamental Design Issues

Understanding Parallel Architecture

Traditional taxonomies not very useful
Programming models not enough, nor hardware structures

Same one can be supported by radically different architectures

Architectural distinctions that affect software

Compilers, libraries, programs

Design of user/system and hardware/software interface

Constrained from above by progr. models and below by technology

Guiding principles provided by layers

What primitives are provided at communication abstraction

How programming models map to these

How they are mapped to hardware

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Fundamental Design Issues

At any layer, interface (contract) aspect and performance aspects

Naming: How are logically shared data and/or processes referenced?

Operations: What operations are provided on these data

Ordering: How are accesses to data ordered and coordinated?

Replication: How are data replicated to reduce communication?

Communication Cost: Latency, bandwidth, overhead, occupancy

Understand at programming model first, since that sets requirements

Other issues
Node Granularity: How to split between processors and memory?
...
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Sequential Programming Model

Contract

Naming: Can name any variable in virtual address space

Hardware (and perhaps compilers) does translation to physical addresses

Operations: Loads and Stores

Ordering: Sequential program order

Performance

Rely on dependences on single location (mostly): dependence order

Compilers and hardware violate other orders without getting caught

Compiler: reordering and register allocation

Hardware: out of order, pipeline bypassing, write buffers

Transparent replication in caches

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SAS Programming Model

Naming: Any process can name any variable in shared space
Operations: loads and stores, plus those needed for ordering
Simplest Ordering Model:

Within a process/thread: sequential program order

Across threads: some interleaving (as in time-sharing)

Additional orders through synchronization

Again, compilers/hardware can violate orders without getting caught

Different, more subtle ordering models also possible (discussed later)

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Synchronization
Mutual exclusion (locks)

Ensure certain operations on certain data can be performed by

only one process at a time

Room that only one person can enter at a time

No ordering guarantees

Event synchronization

Ordering of events to preserve dependences

e.g. producer > consumer of data

3 main types:

point-to-point
global
group

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Message Passing Programming Model

Naming: Processes can name private data directly.

No shared address space

Operations: Explicit communication through send and receive

Send transfers data from private address space to another process
Receive copies data from process to private address space
Must be able to name processes

Ordering:
Program order within a process
Send and receive can provide pt to pt synch between processes
Mutual exclusion inherent

Can construct global address space:

Process number + address within process address space
But no direct operations on these names

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Design Issues Apply at All Layers

Prog. models position provides constraints/goals for system
In fact, each interface between layers supports or takes a position on:

Naming model
Set of operations on names
Ordering model
Replication
Communication performance

Any set of positions can be mapped to any other by software

Lets see issues across layers
How lower layers can support contracts of programming models
Performance issues

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Naming and Operations

Naming and operations in programming model can be directly
supported by lower levels, or translated by compiler, libraries or OS
Example: Shared virtual address space in programming model
Hardware interface supportsshared physical address space

Direct support by hardware through v-to-p mappings, no software layers

Hardware supports independent physical address spaces

Can provide SAS through OS, so in system/user interface

v-to-p mappings only for data that are local

remote data accesses incur page faults; brought in via page fault handlers
same programming model, different hardware requirements and cost model

Or through compilers or runtime, so above sys/user interface

shared objects, instrumentation of shared accesses, compiler support

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Naming and Operations (contd)

Example: Implementing Message Passing
Direct support at hardware interface

But match and buffering benefit from more flexibility

Support at sys/user interface or above in software (almost always)

Hardware interface provides basic data transport (well suited)

Send/receive built in sw for flexibility (protection, buffering)

Choices at user/system interface:

OS each time: expensive

OS sets up once/infrequently, then little sw involvement each time

Or lower interfaces provide SAS, and send/receive built on top

with buffers and loads/stores

Need to examine the issues and tradeoffs at every layer

Frequencies and types of operations, costs

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Ordering
Message passing: no assumptions on orders across processes except
those imposed by send/receive pairs
SAS: How processes see the order of other processes references
defines semantics of SAS

Ordering very important and subtle

Uniprocessors play tricks with orders to gain parallelism or locality

These are more important in multiprocessors

Need to understand which old tricks are valid, and learn new ones

How programs behave, what they rely on, and hardware implications

75

Replication
Very important for reducing data transfer/communication
Again, depends on naming model
Uniprocessor: caches do it automatically

Reduce communication with memory

Message Passing naming model at an interface

A receive replicates, giving a new name; subsequently use new name

Replication is explicit in software above that interface

SAS naming model at an interface

A load brings in data transparently, so can replicate transparently

Hardware caches do this, e.g. in shared physical address space

OS can do it at page level in shared virtual address space, or objects

No explicit renaming, many copies for same name: coherence problem

in uniprocessors, coherence of copies is natural in memory hierarchy

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Communication Performance
Performance characteristics determine usage of operations at a layer

Programmer, compilers etc make choices based on this

Fundamentally, three characteristics:

Latency: time taken for an operation

Bandwidth: rate of performing operations

Cost: impact on execution time of program

If processor does one thing at a time: bandwidth 1/latency

But actually more complex in modern systems

Characteristics apply to overall operations, as well as individual

components of a system, however small
Well focus on communication or data transfer across nodes

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Simple Example
Component performs an operation in 100ns
Simple bandwidth: 10 Mops
Internally pipeline depth 10 => bandwidth 100 Mops

Rate determined by slowest stage of pipeline, not overall latency

Delivered bandwidth on application depends on initiation frequency

Suppose application performs 100 M operations. What is cost?

op count * op latency gives 10 sec (upper bound)

op count / peak op rate gives 1 sec (lower bound)

assumes full overlap of latency with useful work, so just issue cost

if application can do 50 ns of useful work before depending on result of

op, cost to application is the other 50ns of latency

78

Linear Model of Data Transfer Latency

Transfer time (n) = T0 + n/B

useful for message passing, memory access, vector ops etc

As n increases, bandwidth approaches asymptotic rate B

How quickly it approaches depends on T0
Size needed for half bandwidth (half-power point):
n1/2 = T0 / B
But linear model not enough

When can next transfer be initiated? Can cost be overlapped?

Need to know how transfer is performed

79

Communication Cost Model

Comm Time per message= Overhead + Assist Occupancy +
Network Delay + Size/Bandwidth + Contention
= ov + oc + l + n/B + Tc
Overhead and assist occupancy may be f(n) or not
Each component along the way has occupancy and delay

Overall delay is sum of delays

Overall occupancy (1/bandwidth) is biggest of occupancies

Comm Cost = frequency * (Comm time - overlap)

General model for data transfer: applies to cache misses too
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Summary of Design Issues

Functional and performance issues apply at all layers
Functional: Naming, operations and ordering
Performance: Organization, latency, bandwidth, overhead, occupancy
Replication and communication are deeply related

Management depends on naming model

Goal of architects: design against frequency and type of operations

that occur at communication abstraction, constrained by tradeoffs
from above or below

Hardware/software tradeoffs

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Recap
Parallel architecture is important thread in evolution of architecture

At all levels

Multiple processor level now in mainstream of computing

Exotic designs have contributed much, but given way to convergence

Push of technology, cost and application performance

Basic processor-memory architecture is the same

Key architectural issue is in communication architecture

How communication is integrated into memory and I/O system on node

Fundamental design issues

Functional: naming, operations, ordering

Performance: organization, replication, performance characteristics

Design decisions driven by workload-driven evaluation

Integral part of the engineering focus

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Outline for Rest of Class

Understanding parallel programs as workloads

Much more variation, less consensus and greater impact than in sequential

What they look like in major programming models (Ch. 2)

Programming for performance: interactions with architecture (Ch. 3)

Methodologies for workload-driven architectural evaluation (Ch. 4)

Cache-coherent multiprocessors with centralized shared memory

Basic logical design, tradeoffs, implications for software (Ch 5)

Physical design, deeper logical design issues, case studies (Ch 6)

Scalable systems

Design for scalability and realizing programming models (Ch 7)

Hardware cache coherence with distributed memory (Ch 8)

Hardware-software tradeoffs for scalable coherent SAS (Ch 9)

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Outline (contd.)
Interconnection networks (Ch 10)
Latency tolerance (Ch 11)
Future directions (Ch 12)

Overall: conceptual foundations and engineering issues across broad

range of scales of design, all of which are important

84