一种基于路径优化的推测多线程划分算法

推测多线程(speculative multithreading,简称SpMT)技术是一种实现非规则程序自动并行化的有效途径.然而,基于控制流图和分支预测技术的线程划分方法,不可避免地会受到划分路径上所存在的控制依赖和数据依赖的制约.目前,在传统的线程划分算法中存在的一个重要问题是,在对划分路径进行选取时只考虑了控制依赖影响却不能有效地综合考虑数据依赖的影响,进而导致不能选取最佳的划分路径.因此,针对传统方法中这种依赖评估方法效率低下的问题,设计并实现了一种基于路径优化的线程划分算法.该算法通过引入基于程序切片技术的预计算方法,建立一种路径评估方法来评估程序间的控制和数据依赖.同时,引入控制线程体大小的启发式规则,以便有效地解决负载不平衡的问题.基于Olden测试集的测试结果表明,所提出的算法可以有效地对非规则程序进行划分,其平均加速比可以达到1.83.     

Shared write buffer to boost applications on SpMT architecture

With the trend of growing number of integrated processing cores on Chip Multiprocessors, researchers are working hard to increase the available parallelism of software programs so as to efficiently harness the growing computing power. One noticeable direction among these efforts is speculative multi-threading (SpMT), a.k.a thread level speculation, which aims to extract thread level parallelism by splitting a sequential execution thread into several finer ones and execute them on parallel. A SpMT thread is in speculative status before it “knows” all its input data are correct. A speculative thread needs to write to the L1 cache, but its output might be discarded if the speculation eventually fails. However, another speculative thread may have already read in such speculative output. Therefore, some mechanism is needed to support speculative read and write. And because the SpMT threads are extracted from a single thread, they usually share lots of data, thus there might be intense data coherence among the L1 caches. It would be very complicated to support data coherence and speculation together. This Paper proposes a shared write buffer among the SpMT cores. We are able to confine the speculative read and write in the SWB, thus the speculation will not interference with coherence, and the L1 cache design could be drastically simplified. Experiments show that the SWB can capture a big portion of inter-core data sharing, reduce cache coherence, and drastically improve data access performance of SpMT threads.     

A thread partitioning approach for speculative multithreading

Speculative multithreading (SpMT) is a thread-level automatic parallelization technique, which partitions sequential programs into multithreads to be executed in parallel. This paper presents different thread partitioning strategies for nonloops and loops. For nonloops, we propose a cost estimation based on combined run-time effects of various speculation factors to predict the resulting performance of candidate threads to guide the thread partitioning. For loops, we parallelize all the profitable loops that can potentially offer additional performance benefits by multilevel spawning in loop bodies, loop iterations, and inner loops. Then we select a proper thread boundary located in the front of loop branch instruction to reduce invalid spawning threads that waste core resources. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can obtain a significant increase in speedup and Olden benchmarks reach a performance improvement of 6.62 % on average.     

一种数据结构制导的线程划分方法与执行模型

在对程序进行并行化时,为了保证结果的正确性,并行编译器只能采取一种保守的策略,也就是,如果它不能确定两段代码在并行执行时是否会发生冲突,它就不允许这两段代码并行执行.虽然这种做法保证了正确性,但同时也限制了对并行性的开发.在这种背景下,许多推测多线程方法被提了出来,这些方法通过允许可能冲突的代码段并行执行来把握更多的并行机会,同时,通过从冲突中恢复来保证结果的正确性.然而,传统推测多线程方法所使用的“沿控制流将串行程序划分为多个线程”的做法并不适合不同数据结构上的操作在控制流中相互交错的情况,因为如果沿控制流将程序线性地划分为多个线程,则同一个数据结构上的操作将被分到不同的线程中,从而非常容易发生冲突.为了有效地对这些程序进行并行化,提出了一种基于数据结构的线程划分方法与执行模型.在这种方法中,程序中的对象被划分成多个组,同一组中对象上的操作被分派到同一个线程中去执行,从而降低了在同一个数据结构上发生冲突的可能性.     

Compiler Techniques for the Superthreaded Architectures1, 2

Several useful compiler and program transformation techniques for the superthreaded architectures are presented in this paper. The superthreaded architecture adopts a thread pipelining execution model to facilitate runtime data dependence checking between threads, and to maximize thread overlap to enhance concurrency. In this paper, we present some important program transformation techniques to facilitate concurrent execution among threads, and to manage critical system resources such as the memory buffers effectively. We evaluate the effectiveness of those program transformation techniques by applying them manually on several benchmark programs, and using a trace-driven, cycle-by-cycle superthreaded processor simulator. The simulation results show that a superthreaded processor can achieve promising speedup for most of the benchmark programs.     

Mitosis: A Speculative Multithreaded Processor Based on Precomputation Slices

This paper presents the Mitosis framework, which is a combined hardware-software approach to speculative multithreading, even in the presence of frequent dependences among threads. Speculative multithreading increases single-threaded application performance by exploiting thread-level parallelism speculatively - that is, executing code in parallel even when the compiler or runtime system cannot guarantee the parallelism exists. The proposed approach is based on predicting/computing thread input values via software, through a piece of code that is added at the beginning of each thread (the pre-computation slice). A pre-computation slice is expected to compute the correct thread input values most of the time, but not necessarily always. This allows aggressive optimization techniques to be applied to the slice to make it very short. This paper focuses on the microarchitecture that supports this execution model. The primary novelty of the microarchitecture is the hardware support for the execution and validation of pre-computation slices. Additionally, this paper presents new architectures for the register file and the cache memory in order to support multiple versions of each variable and allow for efficient roll-back in case of misspeculation. We show that the proposed microarchitecture, together with the compiler support, achieves an average speedup of 2.2 for applications that conventional non-speculative approaches are not able to parallelize at all.     

Coarse-grained thread pipelining: a speculative parallel executionmodel for shared-memory multiprocessors

This paper presents a new parallelization model, called coarse-grained thread pipelining, for exploiting speculative coarse-grained parallelism from general-purpose application programs in shared-memory multiprocessor systems. This parallelization model, which is based on the fine-grained thread pipelining model proposed for the superthreaded architecture, allows concurrent execution of loop iterations in a pipelined fashion with runtime data-dependence checking and control speculation. The speculative execution combined with the runtime dependence checking allows the parallelization of a variety of program constructs that cannot be parallelized with existing runtime parallelization algorithms. The pipelined execution of loop iterations in this new technique results in lower parallelization overhead than in other existing techniques. We evaluated the performance of this new model using some real applications and a synthetic benchmark. These experiments show that programs with a sufficiently large grain size compared to the parallelization overhead obtain significant speedup using this model. The results from the synthetic benchmark provide a means for estimating the performance that can be obtained from application programs that will be parallelized with this model. The library routines developed for this thread pipelining model are also useful for evaluating the correctness of the codes generated by the superthreaded compiler and in debugging and verifying the simulator for the superthreaded processor     

Automatically Partitioning Threads for Multithreaded Architectures

There is an enormous amount of parallelism exposed to fine-grain multithreaded architectures to cover latencies. It is a demanding task for a multithreading programmer to manage such a degree of parallelism by hand. To use multithreaded architectures efficiently it is essential to have compiler support for automatically partitioning programs into threads. This paper solves a fundamental problem in compiling for multithreaded architectures, automatically partitioning a program into threads. The focus of such partitioning is to overlap the remote communication latency and minimize the total execution time. We first formulate the partitioning problem based on a multithreaded execution cost model. Then, we prove such a formulation is NP-hard. Therefore, we propose two heuristic thread-partitioning methods to solve this problem in practice. The advanced partitioning algorithm is a novel extension of list scheduling, and it takes advantage of the cost model to generate near-optimum partitioning results. The remote-path-based partitioning algorithm is a simplified version of the advanced one but it is easy for compiler implementation. The two partitioning algorithms were implemented respectively in a thread partitioning testbed and a research EARTH-C compiler. The experimental results show that both partitioning algorithms are effective to generate efficient threaded code, and code generated by the compiler is comparable to hand-written code.     

支持线程级猜测的存储体系结构设计

在线程级猜测中进行数据依赖相关检测时,存在Cache一致性协议无法容忍线程切换引起的Cache块替换等问题。为此,通过分析推测线程数据管理模型,结合推测线程切概率低的特点,提出一种分布-共享式恢复缓冲区结构。该结构在进行Cache一致性检验时结合作废向量和版本优先级寄存器进行数据依赖检测,利用L2 Cache进行推测数据缓冲和恢复以支持推测线程切换。修改SESC模拟器以验证和评估该存储体系结构。实验结果表明,在保持模拟器理想加速比的情况下,该存储体系结构可以较好地支持推测线程切换。     

Initial results on computational performance of Intel many integrated core,sandy bridge,and graphical processing unit architectures: implementation of a 1D c++/OpenMP electrostatic particle‐in‐cell code

We present initial comparison performance results for Intel many integrated core (MIC), Sandy Bridge (SB), and graphical processing unit (GPU). A 1D explicit electrostatic particle‐in‐cell code is used to simulate a two‐stream instability in plasma. We compare the computation times for various number of cores/threads and compiler options. The parallelization is implemented via OpenMP with a maximum thread number of 128. Parallelization and vectorization on the GPU is achieved with modifying the code syntax for compatibility with CUDA. We assess the speedup due to various auto‐vectorization and optimization level compiler options. Our results show that the MIC is several times slower than SB for a single thread, and it becomes faster than SB when the number of cores increases with vectorization switched on. The compute times for the GPU are consistently about six to seven times faster than the ones for MIC. Compared with SB, the GPU is about two times faster for a single thread and about an order of magnitude faster for 128 threads. The net speedup, however, for MIC and GPU are almost the same. An initial attempt to offload parts of the code to the MIC coprocessor shows that there is an optimal number of threads where the speedup reaches a maximum. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

面向多线程多道程序的加权共享Cache划分

并行应用在共享Cache结构的多核处理器执行时,会因为对共享Cache的冲突访问而产生性能下降和执行时间不确定的现象.共享Cache划分技术可以把共享Cache互斥地分配给多个进程使用,是解决该问题的有效方法.由于线程间的数据共享,线程数目不同的应用对共享Cache的利用率不同,但传统的以失效率最低为目标的共享Cache划分算法(例如UCP)没有区分应用线程数目的不同.文中设计了一种面向多线程多道程序的加权共享Cache划分框架(Weighted Cache Partitioning,WCP),包括面向应用的失效率监控器和加权Cache划分算法.失效率监控器以进程为单位动态监控在不同的Cache容量下应用的失效率;而加权Cache划分算法扩展了传统的失效率最优的Cache划分算法,根据应用线程数目的不同在进行Cache划分时给应用赋予不同的权值,以使具有更多线程的应用获得更多的共享Cache,从而提高系统的整体性能.实验结果表明:加权Cache划分算法虽然失效率有所增高,但却改进了IPC吞吐率、加权加速比和公平性.在由科学和工程计算应用组成的多道程序测试用例中,WCP-1的IPC吞吐率比以失效率最低为目标函数的共享Cache划分算法最高高出10.8%,平均高出5.5%.     

基于多线程技术的用电管理信息系统

设计了一个采用多线程编程技术的用电管理信息系统的整体架构与软件功能模块,详细分析了系统中多线程技术的实现、线程的划分及线程之间的关系。该系统充分利用了多线程同时执行多任务的特性,完成了实时大规模电力抄表、自动电表充值和数据管理等任务。     

SMA:前瞻性多线程体系结构

提出了一种新的ＩＬＰ处理器体系结构－前瞻性多线程体系的结构,简称ＳＭＡ．它结合了前瞻性执行机制和多线程执行机制,以整个线程为长步进行前瞻性执行,多个线程并行执行并且共享处理器硬件资源,这样,处理器既通过组合每个线程的指令窗口形成一个大的动态指令窗口,开发出程序中更大的ＩＬＰ,又利用多线程执行机制屏蔽各种长延迟操作,达到较高的资源利用率;介绍了ＳＭＡ执行模型,并讨论了ＳＭＡ处理器的实现和其中的关键技     

Predicting and Bounding the Speedup of Multithreaded Solaris Programs

In Solaris, threads are frequently relocated. The data associated with a relocated thread have to be moved from the cache of the old processor to the new processor. In order to avoid poor memory performance due to thread relocation, threads can be bound to processors—static scheduling. Finding a static schedule which results in maximum speedup is NP-hard. It is even difficult to determine if a static schedule is close to the optimal case or not. Here, a technique for predicting the speedup of multithreaded Solaris programs is presented. Based on an existing theoretical result, a lower bound on the maximal speedup is also obtained. The predicted speedup and the bound are based on recordings from a single-processor execution. When comparing the predictions with the real speedup using a multiprocessor with eight processors, we see that the predictions are very good. By comparing the speedup of a static schedule with the bound, we see that it is worthwhile to look for other schedules.     

TACLeBench中内核程序循环级推测并行性分析

线程级推测（TLS）技术可挖掘程序并行执行潜能,提高多核资源利用率,但目前TACLeBench的内核基准仍未在TLS并行化中得到有效分析。针对该问题设计了循环级推测执行的剖析方案和剖析工具。选取7个代表性的TACLeBench内核基准程序,首先对程序进行初始化分析,选取程序热点片段插入循环标识;其次对这些片段进行交叉编译,记录程序推测线程与内存地址相关数据,剖析其循环级最大潜在并行性;最后综合探讨程序运行时的特征（线程粒度、可并行化覆盖率、依赖特征）以及源码对加速比的影响。实验结果表明：1）该类程序适合采用TLS加速,与串行执行结果相比,循环结构的推测执行下的大部分程序的加速比在2以上,其中最高加速比达到20.79;2）利用TLS加速TACLeBench内核程序时,多数应用可有效利用4核到16核的计算资源。     

Prefetching with Helper Threads for Loosely Coupled Multiprocessor Systems

This paper presents a helper thread prefetching scheme that is designed to work on loosely coupled processors, such as in a standard chip multiprocessor (CMP) system or an intelligent memory system. Loosely coupled processors have an advantage in that resources such as processor and L1 cache resources are not contended by the application and helper threads, hence preserving the speed of the application. However, interprocessor communication is expensive in such a system. We present techniques to alleviate this. Our approach exploits large loop-based code regions and is based on a new synchronization mechanism between the application and helper threads. This mechanism precisely controls how far ahead the execution of the helper thread can be with respect to the application thread. We found that this is important in ensuring prefetching timeliness and avoiding cache pollution. To demonstrate that prefetching in a loosely coupled system can be done effectively, we evaluate our prefetching by simulating a standard unmodified CMP system and an intelligent memory system where a simple processor in memory executes the helper thread. Evaluating our scheme with nine memory-intensive applications with the memory processor in DRAM achieves an average speedup of 1.25. Moreover, our scheme works well in combination with a conventional processor-side sequential L1 prefetcher, resulting in an average speedup of 1.31. In a standard CMP, the scheme achieves an average speedup of 1.33. Using a real CMP system with a shared L2 cache between two cores, our helper thread prefetching plus hardware L2 prefetching achieves an average speedup of 1.15 over the hardware L2 prefetching for the subset of applications with high L2 cache misses per cycle.     

A compiler for exploiting nested parallelism in OpenMP programs

This paper presents the design and implementation of a parallelization framework and OpenMP runtime support in Intel^® C++ & Fortran compilers for exploiting nested parallelism in applications using OpenMP pragmas or directives. We conduct the performance evaluation of two multimedia applications parallelized with OpenMP pragmas and compiled with the Intel C++ compiler on Hyper-Threading Technology (HT) enabled multiprocessor systems. The performance results show that the multithreaded code generated by the Intel compiler achieved a speedup up to 4.69 on 4 processors with HT enabled for five different input video sequences for the H.264 encoder workload, and a 1.28 speedup on an HT enabled single-CPU system and 1.99 speedup on an HT-enabled dual-CPU system for the audio–visual speech recognition workload. The performance gain due to exploiting nested parallelism for leveraging Hyper-Threading Technology is up to 70% for two multimedia workloads under different multiprocessor system configurations. These results demonstrate that hyper-threading benefits can be achieved by exploiting nested parallelism through Intel compiler and runtime system support for OpenMP programs.     

ParaC:面向GPU平台的图像处理领域的编程框架

GPGPU加速器是当前提高图像处理算法性能的主流加速平台,但是,在GPGPU平台上,同一个程序充分利用硬件体系结构特征和软件特征的优化版本与简单实现版本在性能上会有数量级的差异。GPGPU加速器具有多维多层的大量执行线程和层次化存储体系结构,后者的不同层次具有不同的容量、带宽、延迟和访问权限。同时,图像处理应用程序具有复杂的计算操作、边界处理规则和数据访问特性。因此,任务的并发执行模式、线程的组织方式和并发任务到设备的映射不仅影响到程序的并发度、调度、通信和同步等特性,而且也会影响到访存的带宽、延迟等。因此,GPGPU平台上的程序优化是一个困难、复杂且效率较低的过程。本文提出基于语言扩展的领域编程模型：ParaC。ParaC编程环境利用高层语言扩展描述的程序语义信息,自动分析获取应用程序的操作信息、并发任务间的数据重用信息和访存信息等程序特征,同时结合硬件平台特征,利用基于领域先验知识驱动的编译优化模型自动生成GPGPU平台上的优化代码,最后,利用源源变换编译器生成标准OpenCL程序。本文在测试用例上的实验结果表明,ParaC在GPGPU平台上自动生成的优化版本相对于手工优化版本的加速比最高达到3.22倍,但代码行数只是后者的1.2%到39.68%。