Performance of the NAS Parallel Benchmarks on PVM Based Networks

摘要

The NAS parallel benchmarks are a set of applications that embody the key computational and data-movement characteristics of typical processing in computational aerodynamics. Five of these, the kernel bench-marks, have been implemented on the PVM system, a software system for network-based concurrent computing, with a view to determining the efficacy of networked environments for high-performance computational aerodynamics applications, and to experimentally investigate enhancements to the software infrastructure that optimize communication performance in such environments. We present results of porting and executing the NPB kernels in three different cluster environments using low- to medium-powered workstations on Ethernet and two types of FDDI networks. Our results indicate that mediocre to very good performance could be obtained despite the communications intensive nature of the applications. In most cases, we were able to achieve performance levels within an order of magnitude of a Cray Y/MP-1 on 8-workstation clusters via optimizations to the PVM infrastructure alone, i.e. with little or no algorithmic modifications. However, our results also indicate that further improvements are possible, and that network based computing has the potential to be a viable technology for high-performance scientific computing.