Influence of regular system interrupts on performance of parallel stencil computations

Influence of most resource-intensive regular system interrupts on performance of parallel programs is studied. Depending on hardware architecture and OS settings, these interrupts take 0.1–5% of CPU operation time [1, 2], yet they can cause 10–100% decrease of performance of a parallel program, for instance, for bulk operations [3–10]. The way these interrupts influence operation time of a class of parallel programs with synchronization between neighboring processes at each iteration, such as stencil computations, synchronous cellular automaton, and explicit difference scheme, is studied. Results of testing on computing clusters are given. Measures to reduce influence the interrupts exert on performance of a parallel program are discussed.