LoGPC: Modeling Network Contention in Message-Passing Programs

In many real applications, for example those with frequent and irregular communication patterns or those using large messages, network contention and contention for message processing resources can be a significant part of the total execution time. This paper presents a new cost model, called LoGPC, that extends the LogP [9] and LogGP [4] models to account for the impact of network contention and network interface DMA behavior on the performance of message-passing programs. We validate LoGPC by analyzing three applications implemented with Active Messages [11, 18] on the MIT Alewife multiprocessor. Our analysis shows that network contention accounts for up to 50¢ of the total execution time. In addition, we show that the impact of communication locality on the communication costs is at most a factor of two on Alewife. Finally, we use the model to identify tradeoffs between synchronous and asynchronous message passing styles.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: SIGMETRICS
• Authors: Csaba Andras Moritz, Matthew Frank
• Keywords: Hardware, Irregular Communication Patterns, Network Contention, SIGMETRICS 1998, Total Execution Time