A Case for Migrating Execution for Irregular Applications

Modern supercomputers have millions of cores, each capable of executing one or more threads of program execution. In these computers the site of execution for program threads rarely, if ever, changes from the node in which they were born. This paper discusses the advantages that may accrue when thread states migrate freely from node to node, especially when migration is managed by hardware without requiring software intervention. Emphasis is on supporting the growing classes of algorithms where there is significant sparsity, irregularity, and lack of locality in the memory reference patterns. Evidence is drawn from reformulation of several kernels into a migrating thread context approximating that of an emerging architecture with such capabilities.