Improving the Performance of MPI Derived Datatypes by Optimizing Memory-Access Cost

The MPI Standard supports derived datatypes, which allow users to describe noncontiguous memory layout and communicate noncontiguous data with a single communication function. This feature enables an MPI implementation to optimize the transfer of noncontiguous data. In practice, however, few MPI implementations implement derived datatypes in a way that performs better than what the user can achieve by manually packing data into a contiguous buffer and then calling an MPI function. In this paper, we present a technique for improving the performance of derived datatypes by automatically using packing algorithms that are optimized for memory-access cost. The packing algorithms use memory-optimization techniques that the user cannot apply easily without advanced knowledge of the memory architecture. We present performance results for a matrix-transpose example that demonstrate that our implementation of derived datatypes significantly outperforms both manual packing by the user and the ex...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: CLUSTER
• Authors: Surendra Byna, William D. Gropp, Xian-He Sun, Rajeev Thakur
• Keywords: CLUSTER 2003, Cluster Computing, Implement Derived Datatypes, MPI Implementation, Packing Algorithms