A clustering method to distribute a database on a grid

Clusters and grids of workstations provide available resources for data mining processes. To exploit these resources, new distributed algorithms are necessary, particularly concerning the way to distribute data and to use this partition. We present a clustering algorithm dubbed Progressive Clustering that provides an “intelligent” distribution of data on grids. The usefulness of this algorithm is shown for several distributed datamining tasks.     

Signals,timers, and continuations for multithreaded user‐level protocols

Precise timing and asynchronous I/O are appealing features for many applications. Unix kernels provide such features on a per‐process basis, using signals to communicate asynchronous events to applications. Per‐process signals and timers are grossly inadequate for complex multithreaded applications that require per‐thread signals and timers that operate at finer granularity. To respond to this need, we present a scheme that integrates asynchronous (Unix) signals with user‐level threads, using the ARIADNE system as a platform. This is done with a view towards support for portable, multithreaded, and multiprotocol distributed applications, namely the CLAM (connectionless, lightweight, and multiway) communications library. In the same context, we propose the use of continuations as an efficient mechanism for reducing thread context‐switching and busy‐wait overheads in multithreaded protocols. Our proposal for integrating timers and signal‐handling mechanisms not only solves problems related to race conditions, but also offers an efficient and flexible interface for timing and signalling threads. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于PVM的并行调试环境

并行软件开发环境的研究已日益成为并行计算和并行处理的重点。本文简介了可移植的消息传递环境ＰＶＭ，讨论了以此为目标的图形监视环境ＸＰＶＭ，阐明ＸＰＶＭ环境与实际需要的ＰＶＭ并行调试环境之间的差距，并在此基础上探讨了并行调试环境开发中的技术难点及其设计要求。     

Analysis of a conjugated infinite element method for acoustic scattering

This work is devoted to a study of a conjugated infinite element method for Helmholtz problems in exterior domains. A formulation of this method with Lagrange multipliers defined on (semi-)infinite space is presented and analyzed in a domain decomposition context. The implementation aspects of this method in a parallel industrial acoustic software (SYSNOISE) are described in details. Numerical results show the computational efficiency of this method on acoustic scattering problems.     

Linear self-stabilizing algorithms for the independent and dominating set problems using an unfair distributed scheduler

This paper presents distributed self-stabilizing algorithms for the maximal independent and the minimal dominating set problems. Using an unfair distributed scheduler the algorithms stabilizes in at most max{3n−5,2n} resp. 9n moves. All previously known algorithms required O(n²) moves.     

Metaheuristic downhill simplex method in combinatorial optimization

The concept of combinatorial objects is formalized. It allows strict definition of a combinatorial optimization problem (COP). An efficient metaheuristic method to solve COPs (H-method) is considered. It includes stochastic local search algorithms as a built-in procedure. A parallel implementation of the H-method is set forth and analyzed. The results from a numerical experiment and solution of some well-known COPs on personal computers and on the SKIT cluster supercomputer are presented. The study was supported by INTAS (Project 06-1000017-8909). __________ Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 6, pp. 70–79, November–December 2007.     

Optimal tracing and replay for debugging message-passing parallel programs

A common debugging strategy involves reexecuting a program (on a given input) over and over, each time gaining more information about bugs. Such techniques can fail on message-passing parallel programs. Because of nondeterminacy, different runs on the given input may produce different results. This nonrepeatability is a serious debugging problem, since an execution cannot always be reproduced to track down bugs. This paper presents a technique for tracing and replaying message-passing programs. By tracing the order in which messages are delivered, a reexecution can be forced to deliver messages in their original order, reproducing the original execution. To reduce the overhead of such a scheme, we show that the delivery'order of only messages involved inraces need be traced (and not every message). Our technique makes run-time decisions to detect and trace racing messages and is usuallyoptimal in the sense that the minimal number of racing messages is traced. Experiments indicate that only 1% of the messages are often traced, gaining a reduction of two orders of magnitude over traditional techniques that trace every message. These traces allow an execution to be reproduced any number of times for debugging. Our work is novel in that we adaptively decide what to trace, and trace only those messages that introduce nondeterminacy. With our strategy, large reductions in trace size allow long-running programs to be replayed that were previously unmanageable. In addition, the reduced tracing requirements alleviate tracing bottle-necks, allowing executions to be debugged with substantially lower execution time overhead.This work was supported in part by National Science Foundation grants CCR-8815928 and CCR-9100968, Office of Naval Research grant N00014-89-J-1222, and a grant from Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.     

An experimental and three-dimensional numerical study of natural convection heat transfer between two horizontal parallel plates

In this study, experimental and three-dimensional numerical studies were performed to investigate the effects of plate spacing and temperature difference on natural convection between isothermally heated upward-facing lower horizontal plate and externally insulated horizontal upper plate. Air is used as the heat transfer medium. Rayleigh number varied in the 1108–2.339 × 10⁵ range. Several numerical simulations for three-dimensional steady laminar and turbulent flows heat transfer were carried out using a commercial CFD code Fluent 6.2. Results have shown that there is a good agreement between the numerical and present experimental results as well as with available data in literature.     

A stability classification method and its application to pipelined solution of linear recurrences

A new method of classification for numerical stability of parallel algorithms is proposed based on the theoretical foundation of forward error analysis. It partitions the algorithms according to their asymptotic stability—a measure introduced to relate the limiting behavior of the stability to the size of the problem. Using this method, the stability aspect of the pipelined solution technique for first-order and second-order linear recurrences—the core of a tridiagonal linear equation solver—is studied. In particular, it shows that the pipelined solution method of the first-order linear recurrences has the same degree of stability as the commonly used sequential evaluation algorithms. The stability problems of sequential and pipelined solution methods of the second-order linear recurrences are also studied.     

Locality-preserving hash functions for general purpose parallel computation

Consider the problem of efficiently simulating the shared-memory parallel random access machine (PRAM) model on massively parallel architectures with physically distributed memory. To prevent network congestion and memory bank contention, it may be advantageous to hash the shared memory address space. The decision on whether or not to use hashing depends on (1) the communication latency in the network and (2) the locality of memory accesses in the algorithm.We relate this decision directly to algorithmic issues by studying the complexity of hashing in the Block PRAM model of Aggarwal, Chandra, and Snir, a shared-memory model of parallel computation which accounts for communication locality. For this model, we exhibit a universal family of hash functions having optimal locality. The complexity of applying these hash functions to the shared address space of the Block PRAM (i.e., by permuting data elements) is asymptotically equivalent to the complexity of performing a square matrix transpose, and this result is best possible for all pairwise independent universal hash families. These complexity bounds provide theoretical evidence that hashing and randomized routing need not destroy communication locality, addressing an open question of Valiant.This work was started when the author was a student at Oxford University, supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and a Rhodes Scholarship. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Rhodes Trust.