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At least 1,009 records · Page 56

MAP Algorithms for Decoding Linear Block Codes Based on Sectionalized Trellis Diagrams

The maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) algorithm is a trellis-based MAP decoding algorithm. It is the heart of turbo (or iterative) decoding that achieves an error performance near the Shannon limit. Unfortunately, the implementation of this algorithm requires large computation and storage. Furthermore, its forward and backward recursions result in long decoding delay. For practical applications, this decoding algorithm must be simplified and its decoding complexity and delay must be reduced. In this paper, the MAP algorithm and its variations, such as log-MAP and max-log-MAP algorithms, are first applied to sectionalized trellises for linear block codes and carried out as two-stage decodings. Using the structural properties of properly sectionalized trellises, the decoding complexity and delay of the MAP algorithms can be reduced. Computation-wise optimum sectionalizations of a trellis for MAP algorithms are investigated. Also presented in this paper are bidirectional and parallel MAP decodings.

Lui, Ye↗

Machine Learning Toolkit for Extreme Scale

Support Vector Machines (SVM) is a popular machine learning technique, which has been applied to a wide range of domains such as science, finance, and social networks for supervised learning. MaTEx undertakes the challenge of designing a scalable parallel SVM training algorithm for large scale systems, which includes commodity multi-core machines, tightly connected supercomputers and cloud computing systems. Several techniques are proposed for improved speed and memory space usage including adaptive and aggressive elimination of samples for faster convergence , and sparse format representation of data samples. Several heuristics for earliest possible to lazy elimination of non-contributing samples are considered in MaTEx. In many cases, where an early sample elimination might result in a false positive, low overhead mechanisms for reconstruction of key data structures are proposed. The proposed algorithm and heuristics are implemented and evaluated on various publicly available datasets

Source record↗

SPARC-X: Quantum simulations at extreme scale - reactive dynamics from first principles

We have developed the massively parallel electronic structure code SPARC-X: a computational framework for performing Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations that can scale linearly with the number of atoms in the system, while being able to leverage petascale and emerging exascale parallel computers to study chemical phenomena at unprecedented length and time scales. SPARC-X exploits a recent breakthrough in electronic structure methodologies: systematically improvable, strictly local, orthonormal, discontinuous real-space bases that efficiently and systematically capture the local chemistry of the system. With further adaptation using new machine-learning techniques and the use of the massively parallel Spectral Quadrature (SQ) electronic structure method, the algorithmic complexity and prefactor associated with DFT calculations involving semilocal as well as hybrid functionals are dramatically reduced. Using petascale computational resources, SPARC-X enables quantum mechanical simulations at length and time scales previously accessible only by empirical approaches, e.g., 1,000,000 atoms for a few picoseconds using semilocal functionals or 1,000 atoms for a few picoseconds using hybrid functionals. Using exascale resources, the sizes and times targeted are two orders of magnitude larger. Such a capability has applications in a wide variety of chemical sciences, including reactive interfaces where large length- and/or long time-scales are needed and traditional force fields fail. This is particularly important in dynamic catalysis, where bond breaking and formation must be understood in detail. We developed, tested, and employed the SPARC-X framework to understand the photocatalytic properties of TiO 2 nanoparticles, revealing finite size effects that cannot be captured with standard model systems or functionals. This integrated development and application strategy ensures that SPARC-X remains a robust, efficient, and scalable software package for quantum simulations on current petascale and emerging exascale computing resources.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A parallel multi-domain solution methodology applied to nonlinear thermal transport problems in nuclear fuel pins

This paper describes an efficient and nonlinearly consistent parallel solution methodology for solving coupled nonlinear thermal transport problems that occur in nuclear reactor applications over hundreds of individual 3D physical subdomains. Efficiency is obtained by leveraging knowledge of the physical domains, the physics on individual domains, and the couplings between them for preconditioning within a Jacobian Free Newton Krylov method. Details of the computational infrastructure that enabled this work, namely the open source Advanced Multi-Physics (AMP) package developed by the authors is described. Details of verification and validation experiments, and parallel performance analysis in weak and strong scaling studies demonstrating the achieved efficiency of the algorithm are presented. Furthermore, numerical experiments demonstrate that the preconditioner developed is independent of the number of fuel subdomains in a fuel rod, which is particularly important when simulating different types of fuel rods. Finally, we demonstrate the power of the coupling methodology by considering problems with couplings between surface and volume physics and coupling of nonlinear thermal transport in fuel rods to an external radiation transport code.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

A Domain-Decomposed Multilevel Method for Adaptively Refined Cartesian Grids with Embedded Boundaries

Preliminary verification and validation of an efficient Euler solver for adaptively refined Cartesian meshes with embedded boundaries is presented. The parallel, multilevel method makes use of a new on-the-fly parallel domain decomposition strategy based upon the use of space-filling curves, and automatically generates a sequence of coarse meshes for processing by the multigrid smoother. The coarse mesh generation algorithm produces grids which completely cover the computational domain at every level in the mesh hierarchy. A series of examples on realistically complex three-dimensional configurations demonstrate that this new coarsening algorithm reliably achieves mesh coarsening ratios in excess of 7 on adaptively refined meshes. Numerical investigations of the scheme's local truncation error demonstrate an achieved order of accuracy between 1.82 and 1.88. Convergence results for the multigrid scheme are presented for both subsonic and transonic test cases and demonstrate W-cycle multigrid convergence rates between 0.84 and 0.94. Preliminary parallel scalability tests on both simple wing and complex complete aircraft geometries shows a computational speedup of 52 on 64 processors using the run-time mesh partitioner.

Aftosmis, M. J.↗

VLSI neuroprocessors

Electronic and optoelectronic hardware implementations of highly parallel computing architectures address several ill-defined and/or computation-intensive problems not easily solved by conventional computing techniques. The concurrent processing architectures developed are derived from a variety of advanced computing paradigms including neural network models, fuzzy logic, and cellular automata. Hardware implementation technologies range from state-of-the-art digital/analog custom-VLSI to advanced optoelectronic devices such as computer-generated holograms and e-beam fabricated Dammann gratings. JPL's concurrent processing devices group has developed a broad technology base in hardware implementable parallel algorithms, low-power and high-speed VLSI designs and building block VLSI chips, leading to application-specific high-performance embeddable processors. Application areas include high throughput map-data classification using feedforward neural networks, terrain based tactical movement planner using cellular automata, resource optimization (weapon-target assignment) using a multidimensional feedback network with lateral inhibition, and classification of rocks using an inner-product scheme on thematic mapper data. In addition to addressing specific functional needs of DOD and NASA, the JPL-developed concurrent processing device technology is also being customized for a variety of commercial applications (in collaboration with industrial partners), and is being transferred to U.S. industries. This viewgraph p resentation focuses on two application-specific processors which solve the computation intensive tasks of resource allocation (weapon-target assignment) and terrain based tactical movement planning using two extremely different topologies. Resource allocation is implemented as an asynchronous analog competitive assignment architecture inspired by the Hopfield network. Hardware realization leads to a two to four order of magnitude speed-up over conventional techniques and enables multiple assignments, (many to many), not achievable with standard statistical approaches. Tactical movement planning (finding the best path from A to B) is accomplished with a digital two-dimensional concurrent processor array. By exploiting the natural parallel decomposition of the problem in silicon, a four order of magnitude speed-up over optimized software approaches has been demonstrated.

Kemeny, Sabrina E.↗

Development of a Navier-Stokes algorithm for parallel-processing supercomputers

An explicit flow solver, applicable to the hierarchy of model equations ranging from Euler to full Navier-Stokes, is combined with several techniques designed to reduce computational expense. The computational domain consists of local grid refinements embedded in a global coarse mesh, where the locations of these refinements are defined by the physics of the flow. Flow characteristics are also used to determine which set of model equations is appropriate for solution in each region, thereby reducing not only the number of grid points at which the solution must be obtained, but also the computational effort required to get that solution. Acceleration to steady-state is achieved by applying multigrid on each of the subgrids, regardless of the particular model equations being solved. Since each of these components is explicit, advantage can readily be taken of the vector- and parallel-processing capabilities of machines such as the Cray X-MP and Cray-2.

Swisshelm, Julie M.↗

Development of an aerodynamics algorithm for parallel-processing supercomputers

An explicit flow solver, applicable to the hierarchy of model equations ranging from Euler to full Navier-Stokes, is combined with several techniques designed to reduce computational expense. The computational domain consists of local grid refinements embedded in a global coarse mesh, where the locations of these refinements are defined by the physics of the flow. Flow characteristics are also used to determine which set of model equations is appropriate for solution in each region, thereby reducing not only the number of grid points at which the solution must be obtained, but also the computational effort required to get that solution. Acceleration to steady-state is achieved by applying multigrid on each of the subgrids, regardless of the particular model equations being solved. Since each of these components is explicit, advantage can readily be taken of the vector- and parallel-processing capabilities of machines such as the Cray X-MP and Cray-2.

Swisshelm, Julie M.↗

Parallel multilevel adaptive methods

The progress of a project for the design and analysis of a multilevel adaptive algorithm (AFAC/HM/) targeted for the Navier Stokes Computer is discussed. The results of initial timing tests of AFAC, coupled with multigrid and an efficient load balancer, on a 16-node Intel iPSC/2 hypercube are included. The results of timing tests are presented.

Dowell, B.↗

Explicit integration with GPU acceleration for large kinetic networks

We demonstrate the first implementation of recently-developed fast explicit kinetic integration algorithms on modern graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerators. Taking as a generic test case a Type Ia supernova explosion with an extremely stiff thermonuclear network having 150 isotopic species and 1604 reactions coupled to hydrodynamics using operator splitting, we demonstrate the capability to solve of order 100 realistic kinetic networks in parallel in the same time that standard implicit methods can solve a single such network on a CPU. This orders-of-magnitude decrease in computation time for solving systems of realistic kinetic networks implies that important coupled, multiphysics problems in various scientific and technical fields that were intractable, or could be simulated only with highly schematic kinetic networks, are now computationally feasible.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Lanczos eigensolution method for high-performance computers

The theory, computational analysis, and applications are presented of a Lanczos algorithm on high performance computers. The computationally intensive steps of the algorithm are identified as: the matrix factorization, the forward/backward equation solution, and the matrix vector multiples. These computational steps are optimized to exploit the vector and parallel capabilities of high performance computers. The savings in computational time from applying optimization techniques such as: variable band and sparse data storage and access, loop unrolling, use of local memory, and compiler directives are presented. Two large scale structural analysis applications are described: the buckling of a composite blade stiffened panel with a cutout, and the vibration analysis of a high speed civil transport. The sequential computational time for the panel problem executed on a CONVEX computer of 181.6 seconds was decreased to 14.1 seconds with the optimized vector algorithm. The best computational time of 23 seconds for the transport problem with 17,000 degs of freedom was on the the Cray-YMP using an average of 3.63 processors.

Bostic, Susan W.↗

A high-order time-parallel scheme for solving wave propagation problems via the direct construction of an approximate time-evolution operator

Our manuscript demonstrates a technique for efficiently solving the classical wave equation, the shallow water equations, and, more generally, equations of the form ∂u/∂t=Lu∂u/∂t=Lu, where LL is a skew-Hermitian differential operator. The idea is to explicitly construct an approximation to the time-evolution operator exp(τL)exp(τL) for a relatively large time-step ττ. Recently developed techniques for approximating oscillatory scalar functions by rational functions, and accelerated algorithms for computing functions of discretized differential operators are exploited. Principal advantages of the proposed method include: stability even for large time-steps, the possibility to parallelize in time over many characteristic wavelengths and large speed-ups over existing methods in situations where simulation over long times are required. Numerical examples involving the 2D rotating shallow water equations and the 2D wave equation in an inhomogenous medium are presented, and the method is compared to the 4th order Runge–Kutta (RK4) method and to the use of Chebyshev polynomials. The new method achieved high accuracy over long-time intervals, and with speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than both RK4 and the use of Chebyshev polynomials.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Computational Strategies for Scalable Genomics Analysis

The revolution in next-generation DNA sequencing technologies is leading to explosive data growth in genomics, posing a significant challenge to the computing infrastructure and software algorithms for genomics analysis. Various big data technologies have been explored to scale up/out current bioinformatics solutions to mine the big genomics data. In this review, we survey some of these exciting developments in the applications of parallel distributed computing and special hardware to genomics. We comment on the pros and cons of each strategy in the context of ease of development, robustness, scalability, and efficiency. Although this review is written for an audience from the genomics and bioinformatics fields, it may also be informative for the audience of computer science with interests in genomics applications.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Data communications in a parallel active messaging interface of a parallel computer

Data communications in a parallel active messaging interface (`PAMI`) of a parallel computer composed of compute nodes that execute a parallel application, each compute node including application processors that execute the parallel application and at least one management processor dedicated to gathering information regarding data communications. The PAMI is composed of data communications endpoints, each endpoint composed of a specification of data communications parameters for a thread of execution on a compute node, including specifications of a client, a context, and a task, the compute nodes and the endpoints coupled for data communications through the PAMI and through data communications resources. Embodiments function by gathering call site statistics describing data communications resulting from execution of data communications instructions and identifying in dependence upon the call cite statistics a data communications algorithm for use in executing a data communications instruction at a call site in the parallel application.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Parallel-Processing Software for Creating Mosaic Images

A computer program implements parallel processing for nearly real-time creation of panoramic mosaics of images of terrain acquired by video cameras on an exploratory robotic vehicle (e.g., a Mars rover). Because the original images are typically acquired at various camera positions and orientations, it is necessary to warp the images into the reference frame of the mosaic before stitching them together to create the mosaic. [Also see "Parallel-Processing Software for Correlating Stereo Images," Software Supplement to NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 31, No. 9 (September 2007) page 26.] The warping algorithm in this computer program reflects the considerations that (1) for every pixel in the desired final mosaic, a good corresponding point must be found in one or more of the original images and (2) for this purpose, one needs a good mathematical model of the cameras and a good correlation of individual pixels with respect to their positions in three dimensions. The desired mosaic is divided into slices, each of which is assigned to one of a number of central processing units (CPUs) operating simultaneously. The results from the CPUs are gathered and placed into the final mosaic. The time taken to create the mosaic depends upon the number of CPUs, the speed of each CPU, and whether a local or a remote data-staging mechanism is used.

Klimeck, Gerhard↗

Scalable Cloning on Large-Scale GPU Platforms with Application to Time-Stepped Simulations on Grids

Cloning is a technique to efficiently simulate a tree of multiple what-if scenarios that are unraveled during the course of a base simulation. However, cloned execution is highly challenging to realize on large, distributed memory computing platforms, due to the dynamic nature of the computational load across clones, and due to the complex dependencies spanning the clone tree. In this paper, we present the conceptual simulation framework, algorithmic foundations, and runtime interface of CloneX, a new system we designed for scalable simulation cloning. It efficiently and dynamically creates whole logical copies of a dynamic tree of simulations across a large parallel system without full physical duplication of computation and memory. The performance of a prototype implementation executed on up to 1,024 graphical processing units of a supercomputing system has been evaluated with three benchmarks—heat diffusion, forest fire, and disease propagation models—delivering a speed up of over two orders of magnitude compared to replicated runs. Finally, the results demonstrate a significantly faster and scalable way to execute many what-if scenario ensembles of large simulations via cloning using the CloneX interface.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Streaming data analytics via message passing with application to graph algorithms

The need to process streaming data, which arrives continuously at high-volume in real-time, arises in a variety of contexts including data produced by experiments, collections of environmental or network sensors, and running simulations. Streaming data can also be formulated as queries or transactions which operate on a large dynamic data store, e.g. a distributed database. We describe a lightweight, portable framework named PHISH which enables a set of independent processes to compute on a stream of data in a distributed-memory parallel manner. Datums are routed between processes in patterns defined by the application. PHISH can run on top of either message-passing via MPI or sockets via ZMQ. The former means streaming computations can be run on any parallel machine which supports MPI; the latter allows them to run on a heterogeneous, geographically dispersed network of machines. We illustrate how PHISH can support streaming MapReduce operations, and describe streaming versions of three algorithms for large, sparse graph analytics: triangle enumeration, subgraph isomorphism matching, and connected component finding. Lastly, we also provide benchmark timings for MPI versus socket performance of several kernel operations useful in streaming algorithms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗