Joint UIUC/UMD Parallel
Algorithms/Programming Course
David Padua, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Uzi Vishkin, University of Maryland, speaker
Jeffrey C. Carver, University of Alabama
Motivation 1/4
Programmers of today’s parallel machines must overcome 3
productivity busters, beyond just identifying operations
that can be executed in parallel:
(i) impose the often difficult 4-step programming-for-locality
recipe: decomposition, assignment, orchestration, and
mapping [CS99]
(ii) reason about concurrency in threads; e.g., race conditions
(iii) for machines such as GPU, that fall behind on serial (or
low parallelism) code, whole programs must be highly
parallel
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Motivation 2/4: Commodity computer systems
If you want your program to run significantly faster … you’re going to
have to parallelize it
 Parallelism: only game in town
But, where are the players?
“The Trouble with Multicore: Chipmakers are busy designing
microprocessors that most programmers can't handle”—D.
Patterson, IEEE Spectrum 7/2010
•
Only heroic programmers can exploit the vast parallelism in current
machines – Report by CSTB, U.S. National Academies 2011
•
An education agenda must: (i) recognize this reality, (ii) adapt to it,
and (iii) identify broad impact opportunities for education
Motivation 3/4: Technical Objectives
• Parallel computing exists for providing speedups over serial
computing
• Its emerging democratization  the general body of CS students &
graduates must be capable of achieving good speedups
What is at stake?
A general-purpose computer that can be programmed effectively by too
few programmers, or requires excessive learning  application SW
development costs more, weakening market potential of not only
the computer:
Traditionally, Economists look to the manufacturing sector for bettering
the recovery prospects of the economy. Software production is the
quintessential 21st century mode of manufacturing. These prospects
are at peril if most programmers are unable to design effective
software for mainstream computers
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Motivation 4/4: Possible Roles for Education
• Facilitator. Prepare & train students and the
workforce for a future dominated by parallelism.
• Testbed. Experiment with vertical approaches and
refine them to identify the most cost-effective ways
for achieving speedups.
• Benchmark. Given a vertical approach, identify the
developmental stage at which it can be taught.
Rationale: Ease of learning/teaching is a necessary
(though not sufficient) condition for ease-ofprogramming
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The joint inter-university course
• UIUC: Parallel Programming for Science and Engineering, Prof: DP
• UMD: Parallel Algorithms, Prof: UV
• Student population: upper-division undergrads and graduate
students. Diverse majors and backgrounds
• ~1/2 of the fall 2010 sessions, joint by videoconferencing.
Objectives
1. Demonstrate logistical and educational feasibility of a real-time cotaught course.
Outcome Overall success. Minimal glitches. Helped to alert students
that success on material taught by the other prof is as important.
2. Compare OpenMP using 8-processor SMP against PRAM/XMTC using
64-processor XMT (<1/4 of silicon area for 2 SMP processors)
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Joint sessions
• DP taught OpenMP programming. Provided parallel architecture
knowledge
• UV taught parallel (PRAM) algorithms. ~20 minutes of XMTC
programming
• 3 joints programming assignments
Non-shared sessions
• UIUC: mostly MPI. Submitted more OpenMP programming
assignments
• UMD: More parallel algorithms. Dry homework on design & analysis
of parallel algorithms. Submitted a more demanding XMTC
programming assignment
JC: Anonymous questionnaire filled by the students. Accessed by DP7
and UV only after all grades were posted, per IRB guidelines
Rank approaches for achieving (hard) speedups
Breadth-first-search (BFS) example
• 42 students in fall 2010 joint UIUC/UMD course
- <1X speedups using OpenMP on 8-processor SMP
- 7x-25x speedups on 64-processor XMT FPGA prototype
Questionnaire All students, but one : XMTC ahead of OpenMP for
achieving speedups
In view of this evidence Are we really ready for standards?
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Parallel Random-Access Machine/Model
PRAM:
n synchronous processors all having unit time access to a shared memory.
Reactions
You got to be kidding, this is way:
- Too easy
- Too difficult:
Why even mention processors? What to do with
How to allocate processors to instructions?
n processors?
Immediate Concurrent Execution
‘Work-Depth framework’ SV82, Adopted in Par Alg texts [J92,KKT01].Example: Pairwise
parallel summation. 1st round for 8 elements: In parallel 1st+2nd, 3rd+4th,5th+6th,7th+8th
ICE basis for architecture specs:
V, Using simple abstraction to reinvent computing for parallelism, CACM 1/2011
Similar to role of stored-program & program-counter in arch specs for serial comp
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Feasible for many-cores
Algorithms
PRAM-On-Chip HW Prototypes
Programming
64-core, 75MHz FPGA of XMT [SPAA98..CF08]
Toolchain Compiler +
simulator HIPS’11
128-core interconnection network
Programmer’s
workflow
IBM 90nm: 9mmX5mm,
400 MHz [HotI07]
-
Rudimentary yet stable FPGA designASIC
•
IBM 90nm: 10mmX10mm
compiler
•
150 MHz
Architecture scales to 1000+ cores on-chip
XMT homepage: www.umiacs.umd.edu/users/vishkin/XMT/index.shtml or search:
‘XMT’
Has the study of PRAM algorithms
helped XMT programming?
• Majority of UIUC students No
• UMD students Strong Yes: enforced by written explanation
Discussion
Exposure of UIUC students to PRAM algorithms and XMT programming
much more limited. Their understanding of this material not
challenged by analytic homework, or exams.
For same programming challenges, performance of UIUC and UMD
students was similar.
Must students be exposed to minimal amount of parallel algorithms and
their programming, and be properly challenged on analytic
understanding to internalize their merit? If yes: tension with pressure
on parallel computing courses to cover a hodge-podge of
programming paradigms & architecture backgrounds
More Issues/lessons
• Recall the title of the courses at UIUC/UMD: Should
we use class time only for algorithms or also for
programming?
Algorithms: high level of abstraction. Allows to
cover more advanced problems. Note:
Understanding tested only for UMD students.
• Made do with already assigned courses. Next time:
more homogenous population; e.g., CS grad class. If
interested in taking part, please let us know
• General lesson: IRB requires pre-submission of all
questionnaires. Must complete planning by then.
Conclusion
For parallelism to succeed serial computing in the
mainstream, the first experience of students got to:
- demonstrate solid hard speedups
- be trauma-free
Beyond education Objective rankings of approaches
for achieving hard speedups provide a clue for
curing the ills of the field.
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Course homepages
agora.cs.illinois.edu/display/cs420fa10/Home and
www.umiacs.umd.edu/users/vishkin/TEACHING/enee459p-f10.html
For summary of the PRAM/XMT education approach:
www.umiacs.umd.edu/users/vishkin/XMT/PPOPPCPATH2011.pdf
Includes teaching experience extending from middle school to
graduate courses, course material [class notes,
programming assignments, video presentations of a fullday tutorial and a full-semester graduate course], a
software toolchain (compiler and cycle-accurate simulator,
HIPS 5/20) available for free download, and the XMT
hardware
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How I teach parallel algorithms at
different developmental stage
• Graduate In class, same PRAM algorithms course as in prior
decades and complexity-style dry HW. <20 minutes of
XMTC programming. 6 programming assigning with target
hard speedups objectives. Include: parallel graph
connectivity and XMT performance tuning
• Upper division undergraduate Less dry HW. Less
programming. Still demand hard speedups
• Freshmen/HS [SIGCSE’10] Minimal/no dry HW. Same
problems as in freshmen serial programming course
 Understanding of par algorithms needs to be enforced &
validated by programming, or otherwise most students will
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get very little from it
What about architecture education?
• Need badly parallel architectures that make parallel thinking easier
• In the happy days of serial computing, stored-program + program
counter  wall between arch and alg  algs low priority. Not now!
• A trigger for XMT: brilliant incompetence of CSE@UMD.
ECE faculty never teach undergrad alg courses. Can be alg researcher
and teach arch courses …  XMT
Reality Few regularly teach arch and (grad) alg courses, not to say par
algs
But, why rely on accidents?! teach next generation arch students to
master both, so that they can be better architects
• Very different thought styles are used for one and the same problem
more often than are very closely related ones—1935, Ludwik Fleck
(‘the Turing’ of Sociology of Science)
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