Optimizing Non-commutative Allreduce Over Virtualized, Migratable MPI Ranks

Abstract

Dynamic load balancing can be difficult for MPI-based applications. Application logic and algorithms are often rewritten to enable dynamic repartitioning of the domain. An alternative approach is to virtualize the MPI ranks as threads-instead of operating system processes- and to migrate threads around the system to balance the computational load. Adaptive MPI is one such implementation. It supports virtualization of MPI ranks as migratable user-level threads. However, this migratability itself can introduce new performance overheads to applications. In this paper, we identify non-commutative reduction operations as problematic for any runtime supporting either user-defined initial mapping of ranks or dynamic migration of ranks among the cores or nodes of a machine. We investigate the challenges associated with supporting efficient non-commutative reduction operations, and explore algorithmic alternatives such as recursive doubling and halving in combination with a novel adaptive message combining technique. We explore tradeoffs in the different algorithms for various message sizes and mappings of ranks to cores, demonstrating our performance improvements using microbenchmarks.