Heterogeneous Distribution of Computations Solving Linear Algebra Problems on Networks of Heterogeneous Computers

This paper presents and analyzes two different strategies of heterogeneous distribution of computations solving dense linear algebra problems on heterogeneous networks of computers. The first strategy is based on heterogeneous distribution of processes over processors and homogeneous block cyclic distribution of data over the processes. The second is based on homogeneous distribution of processes over processors and heterogeneous block cyclic distribution of data over the processes. Both strategies were implemented in the mpC language—a dedicated parallel extension of ANSI C for efficient and portable programming of heterogeneous networks of computers. The first strategy was implemented using calls to ScaLAPACK; the second strategy was implemented with calls to LAPACK and BLAS. Cholesky factorization on a heterogeneous network of workstations is used to demonstrate that the heterogeneous distributions have an advantage over the traditional homogeneous distribution.