Pipelining Wavefront Computations: Experiences and Performance

Abstract. Wavefront computations are common in scientific applications. Although it is well understood how wavefronts are pipelined for parallel execution, the question remains: How are they best presented to the compiler for the effective generation of pipelined code? We address this question through a quantitative and qualitative study of three approaches to expressing pipelining: programmer implemented via message passing, compiler discovered via automatic parallelization, and programmer defined via explicit parallel language features for pipelining. This work is the first assessment of the efficacy of these approaches in solving wavefront computations, and in the process, we reveal surprising characteristics of commercial compilers. We also demonstrate that a parallel language-level solution simplifies development and consistently performs well.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: E. Christopher Lewis, Lawrence Snyder
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, Explicit Parallel Language, IPPS 2000, Parallel Execution, Wavefront Computations