A Heterogeneous Lightweight Multithreaded Architecture

Programs with irregular patterns of dynamic data structures and/or those with complicated control structures such as recursion are notoriously difficult to parallelize efficiently. For some highly-irregular applications, such as a SAT solver, it has been nearly impossible to obtain significant parallel speedups on conventional SMP systems over serial implementations. Lightweight multithreading, as found in the Cray MTA and the upcoming XMT (Eldorado), has been demonstrated as an effective approach to attacking these problems. In this paper, we describe a heterogeneous lightweight multithreading that extends ideas found in the Cray machines to support larger numbers of threads while reducing the cost of thread management and synchronization.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Sheng Li, Amit Kashyap, Shannon K. Kuntz, Jay B. Brockman, Peter M. Kogge, Paul L. Springer, Gary Block
• Keywords: Complicated Control Structures, Conventional Smp Systems, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Dynamic Data Structures, IPPS 2007