Extending OpenMP for NUMA machines

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Bircsak, John | Craig, Peter | Crowell, RaeLyn | Cvetanovic, Zarka | Harris, Jonathan | Nelson, C. Alexander | Offner, Carl D.

Affiliations: Compaq Computer Corporation, 110 Spitbrook Road, Nashua, NH 03062, USA

Note: [] Tel.: +1 603 884 1779; Fax: +1 603 884 0153; E-mail: Jonathan.Harris@compaq.com

Abstract: This paper describes extensions to OpenMP that implement data placement features needed for NUMA architectures. OpenMP is a collection of compiler directives and library routines used to write portable parallel programs for shared-memory architectures. Writing efficient parallel programs for NUMA architectures, which have characteristics of both shared-memory and distributed-memory architectures, requires that a programmer control the placement of data in memory and the placement of computations that operate on that data. Optimal performance is obtained when computations occur on processors that have fast access to the data needed by those computations. OpenMP -- designed for shared-memory architectures -- does not by itself address these issues. The extensions to OpenMP Fortran presented here have been mainly taken from High Performance Fortran. The paper describes some of the techniques that the Compaq Fortran compiler uses to generate efficient code based on these extensions. It also describes some additional compiler optimizations, and concludes with some preliminary results.

Journal: Scientific Programming, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 163-181, 2000