Exploring DataVortex Systems for Irregular Applications

Emerging applications for data analytics and knowledge discovery typically have irregular or unpredictable communication patterns that do not scale well on parallel systems designed for traditional bulk-synchronous HPC applications. New network architectures that focus on minimizing (short) message latencies, rather than maximizing (large) transfer bandwidths, are emerging as possible alternatives to better support those applications with irregular communication patterns. We explore a system based upon one such novel network architecture, the Data Vortex interconnection network, and examine how this system performs by running benchmark code written for the Data Vortex network, as well as a reference MPI-over-Infiniband implementation, on the same cluster. Simple communication primitives (ping-pong and barrier synchronization), a few common communication kernels (distributed 1D Fast Fourier Transform, breadth-first search, Giga-Updates Per Second) and three prototype applications (a proxy application for simulating neutron transport-”SNAP”, a finite difference simulation for computing incompressible fluid flow, and an implementation of the heat equation) were all implemented for both network models. The results were compared and analyzed to determine what characteristics make an application a good candidate for porting to a Data Vortex system, and to what extent applications could potentially benefit from this new architecture.