Hypergraph-Partitioning-Based Remapping Models for Image-Space-Parallel Direct Volume Rendering of Unstructured Grids

In this work, image-space-parallel direct volume rendering (DVR) of unstructured grids is investigated for distributed-memory architectures. A hypergraph-partitioning-based model is proposed for the adaptive screen partitioning problem in this context. The proposed model aims to balance the rendering loads of processors while trying to minimize the amount of data replication. In the parallel DVR framework we adopted, each data primitive is statically owned by its home processor, which is responsible from replicating its primitives on other processors. Two appropriate remapping models are proposed by enhancing the above model for use within this framework. These two remapping models aim to minimize the total volume of communication in data replication while balancing the rendering loads of processors. Based on the proposed models, a parallel DVR algorithm is developed. The experiments conducted on a PC cluster show that the proposed remapping models achieve better speedup values compared to the remapping models previously suggested for image-space-parallel DVR     

A Uniform Framework for Dynamic Load Balancing Strategies in Distributed Processing Systems

Load balancing plays a central role in processor utilizations in distributed systems. Several strategies have been proposed in the literature to achieve load balancing. Usually, these strategies attempt to achieve a tradeoff between reducing the execution time of an application and minimizing the synchronization and the communication overhead. In this paper, we present a general model in which load balancing decisions are reached by enforcing performance metrics which may be adapted to reflect the specific requirements of different environments. Many of the load balancing schemes that have been suggested in the literature can be viewed as specific instances of the general framework presented in this paper. The basic scheme in this framework uses a load contention number that accounts for the load of the processors, the communication cost and the distance among processors. It is meant to be adaptable to the overall load on the system, the load on the communication devices, the run time characteristics of the tasks, and the configuration of the system. Furthermore, its implementation is not computationally complex. Thus, the gains made by load balancing are not overshadowed by the load balancing cost.     

P2P分布实时数据交换的高可用混合负载均衡算法

负载分配是分布式系统的资源管理和任务调度的关键问题之一，本文在分析当前已有算法在负载的实时分配方面存在的问题基础上，提出了适用于P2P分布实时数据交换的高可用性混合负载均衡算法2PLB．该算法将处理结点的处理能力和网络流情况协同考虑，以一种静态负载均衡和动态负载均衡结合的自调节混合负载均衡算法实现用于实时任务调度和负载调节．相比单纯的静态负载均衡或者动态负载均衡算法，本文所提的算法避免了纯静态负载均衡算法在处理任务时不能满足可适应性问题，又克服了纯动态负载均衡在任务处理过程中由于维护动态负载状态和任务迁移而导致的计算复杂度等问题的缺点，所提算法对于大规模实时任务处理具有实时性强，易于调度，具有显著的可比性等特点，广域网络环境下的系统测试表明所提算法能够以对等模式提供高质量实时数据交换和共享服务．     

Hierarchical Scheduling of Dynamic Parallel Computations on Hypercube Multicomputers

In this paper a hierarchical task scheduling strategy for assigning parallel computations with dynamic structures to large hypercube multicomputers is proposed. Such computations represent a wide range of recursive and divide/conquer algorithms for which structure of the problem varies dynamically. To achieve load balancing and reduce processor contentions, the system is divided into multiple regions of processors for which the first level of scheduling is done by the host computer that spreads out the initial computations into these regions. The second level scheduling is done by a set of median processors of these regions which enable the processors of their regions to optimally balance the dynamically created load and to communicate with each other with reduced overhead. The results of an extensive simulation study are presented that exhibit the performance of the proposed strategy under different loading conditions, varying degrees of depth and parallelism, and communication costs. The proposed dual-level hierarchical scheduling is shown to outperform a well known distributed scheduling strategy.     

A repartitioning hypergraph model for dynamic load balancing

In parallel adaptive applications, the computational structure of the applications changes over time, leading to load imbalances even though the initial load distributions were balanced. To restore balance and to keep communication volume low in further iterations of the applications, dynamic load balancing (repartitioning) of the changed computational structure is required. Repartitioning differs from static load balancing (partitioning) due to the additional requirement of minimizing migration cost to move data from an existing partition to a new partition. In this paper, we present a novel repartitioning hypergraph model for dynamic load balancing that accounts for both communication volume in the application and migration cost to move data, in order to minimize the overall cost. The use of a hypergraph-based model allows us to accurately model communication costs rather than approximate them with graph-based models. We show that the new model can be realized using hypergraph partitioning with fixed vertices and describe our parallel multilevel implementation within the Zoltan load balancing toolkit. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first implementation for dynamic load balancing based on hypergraph partitioning. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we conducted experiments on a Linux cluster with 1024 processors. The results show that, in terms of reducing total cost, our new model compares favorably to the graph-based dynamic load balancing approaches, and multilevel approaches improve the repartitioning quality significantly.     

Efficient task migration algorithm for distributed systems

The objective of the study was to achieve balanced load among processors, reduce the communication overhead of the load balancing algorithm, and improve respource utilization, which results in better average resonse time. A communication protocol and a fully distributed algorithm for dynamic load balancing through task migration in a connected N-processor network are presented. Each processor communicates its load directly with only a subset (of the size √ N) of processors, reducing communication traffic and average response time. It is proved that the given algorithm will perform task migration even if there is only one light load processor and one heavy load processor in the system. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can save up to 60% of the protocol messages used by the broadcast algorithms and can reduce the average response time     

Communication results for parallel sparse Cholesky factorization on a hypercube

We consider the problem of reducing data traffic among processor nodes during the parallel factorization of a sparse matrix on a hypercube multiprocessor. A task assignment strategy based on the structure of an elimination tree is presented. This assignment is aimed at achieving load balancing among the processors and also reducing the amount of processor-to-processor data communication. An analysis of regular grid problems is presented, providing a bound on communication volume generated by the new strategy, and showing that the allocation scheme is optimal in the asymptotic sense. Some experimental results on the performance of this scheme are presented.     

An asynchronous and iterative load balancing algorithm for discrete load model

Diffusion algorithms are some of the most popular algorithms for dynamic load balancing in which loads move from heavily loaded processors to lightly loaded neighbor processors. To achieve a global load balance in a parallel computer, the algorithm is iterated until the load difference between any two processors is smaller than a specified value. Therefore, one fundamental property to be studied is algorithm convergence. Several analytical works on the convergence of different diffusion load balancing algorithms have been carried out, but they treat loads as non-negative real quantities. In this paper, we describe the Diffusion Algorithm Searching Unbalanced Domains (DASUD) algorithm, which uses loads as non-negative integer values and, unlike existing algorithms, reaches a local balance situation where the maximum load difference between any two processor in the set of neighbor processors for each processor is one load unit. The convergence property of an asynchronous implementation of DASUD using integer loads is proven theoretically.     

分布式动态负载平衡调度的一个通用模型

在大规模并行分布处理系统，特别是网络工作站机群（ＮＯＷ）系统中，各结点机之间的负载平衡调度是最为常见的关键性问题之一．本文在简单分析了动态负载平衡调度中接收者驱动和发送者驱动这两个常用策略基础上，提出了一个通用的基于混合驱动策略的动态负载平衡调度模型，并给出了曙光１０００并行机上的部分实验结果.     

基于多核并行的海量数据序列模式挖掘*

为了在多核处理器上充分利用多核资源以提升挖掘性能,提出了一种动态与静态任务分配机制相结合的基于多核的并行序列模式挖掘算法。该算法采用数据并行与任务并行相结合的策略,在各处理器核生成局部序列模式后,再与其他处理器核协同,以最终获得所有的全局序列模式。算法通过并行局部归约技术消除了局部序列的重复生成与计算,并可结合静态与动态任务分配机制解决处理器的负载不均衡问题。理论分析和实验都证实了该算法可有效利用多核计算平台及多核体系结构优势,具有较高的运行效率和加速比。     

A model for dynamic adaptive coscheduling

is paper proposes a dynamic adaptive coscheduling model DASIC to take advantage of excess available resources in a network of workstations(NOW). Besides coscheduling related subtasks dynamically,DASIC can scale up or down the process space depending upon the number of available processors on an NOW. Based on the dynamic idle processor group(IPG),DASIC employs thre modules:the coscheduling module,the scalabele scheduling module and the load balancing module,and uses six algorithms to achieve scalability.A simplified DASIC was also implemented,and experimental results are presented in this paper,which show that it can maximize system utilization,and achieve task parallelism as much as possible.     

一种自适应动态负载均衡算法

负载均衡问题是一个经典的组合优化难题,该文建立了一个集群中的负载均衡问题模型,并提出了一种旨在最小化负载均衡开销的动态自适应算法。由于集群中存在网络延时,所以负载重分配的开销很大一部分取决于CPU间发送、接受的消息的最大数量。该负载均衡算法以最小化负载重分配时CPU间消息发送、接受的数量为目标,根据过载、轻载CPU数量的变化动态调用D算法和R算法,以降低负载均衡开销。     

A Dynamic Load Balancing Framework for Real-time Applications in Message Passing Systems

Load balancing algorithms are designed essentially to equally distribute the load on processors and maximize their utilities while minimizing the total task execution time. In order to achieve these goals, the load-balancing mechanism should be “fair” in distributing the load across the different processors. This implies that the difference between the heaviest-loaded and the lightest-loaded processors should be minimized. Therefore, the load information on each processor must be updated such that the load-balancing mechanism can be more effective. In this work, we present an application independent dynamic algorithm for scheduling tasks and load- balancing in message passing systems. We propose a DAG-based Dynamic Load Balancing algorithm for Real time applications (DAG-DLBR) that is designed to work dynamically to cope with possible changes in the load that might occur during runtime. This algorithm addresses the challenge of devising a load balancing scheme which judicially deals with the hybrid execution of existing real-time application (represented by a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG)) together with newly arriving jobs. The main objective of this algorithm is to reduce response times of the newly arriving jobs while maintaining the time constrains of the existing DAG. To evaluate the performance of the DAG-DLBR algorithm, a comparison with the performance of two common dynamic load balancing algorithms is presented. This comparison is performed by evaluating, experimentally, the execution time of different load balancing algorithms on a homogenous real parallel machine. In addition, the values of load imbalance, the execution time, and the communication overhead time are evaluated analytically using different benchmarks as test-bed workloads. These workloads cover a wide range of dynamic applications with different task types. Experimental results illustrate the improved performance of the DAG-DLBR algorithm compared to both distributed and hierarchal based algorithms by at least 12 and 19%, respectively. This improvement is true for all workloads, even with highly dependent workload. The DAG-DLBR algorithm achieves lower computation time than its corresponding values of both the distributed and the hierarchical-based algorithms for 4, 8, 12 and 16 processors.     

Parallel implementation of a ray tracing algorithm for distributed memory parallel computers

Ray tracing is a well known technique to generate life-like images. Unfortunately, ray tracing complex scenes can require large amounts of CPU time and memory storage. Distributed memory parallel computers with large memory capacities and high processing speeds are ideal candidates to perform ray tracing. However, the computational cost of rendering pixels and patterns of data access cannot be predicted until runtime. To parallelize such an application efficiently on distributed memory parallel computers, the issues of database distribution, dynamic data management and dynamic load balancing must be addressed. In this paper, we present a parallel implementation of a ray tracing algorithm on the Intel Delta parallel computer. In our database distribution, a small fraction of database is duplicated on each processor, while the remaining part is evenly distributed among groups of processors. In the system, there are multiple copies of the entire database in the memory of groups of processors. Dynamic data management is acheived by an ALRU cache scheme which can exploit image coherence to reduce data movements in ray tracing consecutive pixels. We balance load among processors by distributing subimages to processors in a global fashion based on previous workload requests. The success of our implementation depends crucially on a number of parameters which are experimentally evaluated. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Design of Adaptive and Decentralized Load Balancing Algorithms with Load Estimation for Computational Grid Environments

In this paper, we address several issues that are imperative to grid environments such as handling resource heterogeneity and sharing, communication latency, job migration from one site to other, and load balancing. We address these issues by proposing two job migration algorithms, which are MELISA (modified ELISA) and LBA (load balancing on arrival). The algorithms differ in the way load balancing is carried out and is shown to be efficient in minimizing the response time on large and small-scale heterogeneous grid environments, respectively. MELISA, which is applicable to large-scale systems (that is, interGrid), is a modified version of ELISA in which we consider the job migration cost, resource heterogeneity, and network heterogeneity when load balancing is considered. The LBA algorithm, which is applicable to small-scale systems (that is, intraGrid), performs load balancing by estimating the expected finish time of a job on buddy processors on each job arrival. Both algorithms estimate system parameters such as the job arrival rate, CPU processing rate, and load on the processor and balance the load by migrating jobs to buddy processors by taking into account the job transfer cost, resource heterogeneity, and network heterogeneity. We quantify the performance of our algorithms using several influencing parameters such as the job size, data transfer rate, status exchange period, and migration limit, and we discuss the implications of the performance and choice of our approaches.     

分布式容错系统的任务分配算法

文章提出了分布式容错系统的任务分配算法,该算法考虑了系统任务的周期性、冗余性特点,以处理机负载平衡为目标,通过三步静态分配实现了任务在处理机中的冗余分布,在系统执行过程中的处理机故障,通过冗余任务动态唤醒实现系统重构。     

网络处理器负载均衡算法综述

本文针对网络处理器中多个处理单元的负载均衡方法展开了讨论,详细介绍了多种负载均衡方法,给出了网络处理器负载均衡的特点和性能度量标准,提出了该领域进一步研究方向和基本思路.对同类研究有一定的帮助.     

Parallel space‐filling curve generation through sorting

In this paper we consider the scalability of parallel space‐filling curve generation as implemented through parallel sorting algorithms. Multiple sorting algorithms are studied and results show that space‐filling curves can be generated quickly in parallel on thousands of processors. In addition, performance models are presented that are consistent with measured performance and offer insight into performance on still larger numbers of processors. At large numbers of processors, the scalability of adaptive mesh refined codes depends on the individual components of the adaptive solver. One such component is the dynamic load balancer. In adaptive mesh refined codes, the mesh is constantly changing resulting in load imbalance among the processors requiring a load‐balancing phase. The load balancing may occur often, requiring the load balancer to perform quickly. One common method for dynamic load balancing is to use space‐filling curves. Space‐filling curves, in particular the Hilbert curve, generate good partitions quickly in serial. However, at tens and hundreds of thousands of processors serial generation of space‐filling curves will hinder scalability. In order to avoid this issue we have developed a method that generates space‐filling curves quickly in parallel by reducing the generation to integer sorting. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种基于任务的机器人全局并行算法研究及实现

本文提出了一种基于任务的机器人全局并行算法，结合主从结构的MIMD并行处理平台将机器人控制中的运动学、动力学、控制律等基本计算任务分别进行任务划分，将划分好的子任务统一用工作池方式实现全局的动态调度．采用流水线及集中式动态调度策略，在一个由5个DSP处理器组成的同构型松耦合MIMD并行处理平台上对平面机器人进行了并行实时仿真实验，取得了满意的并行性能指标．     

基于时间偏差协议的动态负载平衡技术*

对并行VHDL模拟的特殊性进行分析后,建立了一个并行VHDL模拟的动态负载平衡模型。在此模型中,提出动态调节最佳并行规模的动态负载平衡方法来解决系统资源紧张的问题,采用一种新的模拟中负载的度量方法——模拟推进度。此模型还包括基于标准偏差和最小通信变化量的动态负载平衡算法和一个运行中的负载迁移机制。最后对该模型进行可行性分析。