Evaluating multi-core platforms for HPC data-intensive kernels
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Computing frontiers, CF ’09
@conference{van2009evaluating,
title={Evaluating multi-core platforms for HPC data-intensive kernels},
author={van Amesfoort, A.S. and Varbanescu, A.L. and Sips, H.J. and van Nieuwpoort, R.V.},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Computing frontiers},
pages={207–216},
year={2009},
organization={ACM}
}
Multi-core platforms have proven themselves able to accelerate numerous HPC applications. But programming data-intensive applications on such platforms is a hard, and not yet solved, problem. Not only do modern processors favor compute-intensive code, they also have diverse architectures and incompatible programming models. And even after making a difficult platform choice, extensive programming effort must be invested with an uncertain performance outcome. By taking the plunge on an irregular, data-intensive application, we present an evaluation of three platform types, namely the generic multi-core CPU, the STI Cell/B.E., and the GPU. We evaluate these platforms in terms of application performance, programming effort and cost. Although we do not select a clear winner, we do provide a list of guidelines to assist in platform choice and development of similar data-intensive applications.
February 6, 2011 by hgpu
