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At least 343 records · Page 19

On a stochastic approach to a code performance estimation

The main goal of an efficient profiling of software is to minimize the runtime overhead under certain constraints and requirements. The traces built by a profiler during the work, affect the performance of the system itself. One of important aspect of an overhead arises from the randomness of variability in the context in which the application is embedded, e.g., due to possible cache misses, etc. Such uncertainty needs to be taken into account in the design phase. In order to overcome these difficulties we propose to investigate this issue through the analysis of the probability distribution of the difference between profiler’s times for the same code. The approximating model is based on the finite normal mixtures within the framework of the method of moving separation of mixtures. We demonstrate some results for the MATLAB profiler using plotting of 3D surfaces by the function surf. The idea can be used for an estimating of a program efficiency.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

High-performance strategies for the recent MRSF-TDDFT in GAMESS

Multiple ERI (Electron Repulsion Integral) tensor contractions (METC) with several matrices are ubiquitous in quantum chemistry. In response theories, the contraction operation, rather than ERI computations, can be the major bottleneck, as its computational demands are proportional to the multiplicatively combined contributions of the number of excited states and the kernel pre-factors. Here, this paper presents several high-performance strategies for METC. Optimal approaches involve either the data layout reformations of interim density and Fock matrices, the introduction of intermediate ERI quartet buffer, and loop-reordering optimization for a higher cache hit rate. The combined strategies remarkably improve the performance of the MRSF (mixed reference spin flip)-TDDFT (time-dependent density functional theory) by nearly 300%. The results of this study are not limited to the MRSF-TDDFT method and can be applied to other METC scenarios.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

The SrrAB two-component system regulates Staphylococcus aureus pathogenicity through redox sensitive cysteines

Staphylococcus aureus infections can lead to diseases that range from localized skin abscess to life-threatening toxic shock syndrome. The SrrAB two-component system (TCS) is a global regulator of S. aureus virulence and critical for survival under environmental conditions such as hypoxic, oxidative, and nitrosative stress found at sites of infection. Despite the critical role of SrrAB in S. aureus pathogenicity, the mechanism by which the SrrAB TCS senses and responds to these environmental signals remains unknown. Bioinformatics analysis showed that the SrrB histidine kinase contains several domains, including an extracellular Cache domain and a cytoplasmic HAMP-PAS-DHp-CA region. In this work, we show that the PAS domain regulates both kinase and phosphatase enzyme activity of SrrB and present the structure of the DHp-CA catalytic core. Importantly, this structure shows a unique intramolecular cysteine disulfide bond in the ATP-binding domain that significantly affects autophosphorylation kinetics. In vitro data show that the redox state of the disulfide bond affects S. aureus biofilm formation and toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 production. Moreover, with the use of the rabbit infective endocarditis model, we demonstrate that the disulfide bond is a critical regulatory element of SrrB function during S. aureus infection. Our data support a model whereby the disulfide bond and PAS domain of SrrB sense and respond to the cellular redox environment to regulate S. aureus survival and pathogenesis.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Parallelizable adjoint stencil computations using transposed forward-mode algorithmic differentiation

Algorithmic differentiation (AD) is a tool for generating discrete adjoint solvers, which efficiently compute gradients of functions with many inputs, for example for use in gradient-based optimization. AD is often applied to large computations such as stencil operators, which are an important part of most structured-mesh PDE solvers. Stencil computations are often parallelized, for example by using OpenMP, and optimized by using techniques such as cache-blocking and tiling to fully utilize multicore CPUs and many-core accelerators and GPUs. Differentiating these codes with conventional reverse-mode AD results in adjoint codes that cannot be expressed as stencil operations and may not be easily parallelizable. They thus leave most of the compute power of modern architectures unused. We present a method that combines forward-mode AD and loop transformation to generate adjoint solvers that use the same memory access pattern as the original computation that they are derived from and can benefit from the same optimization techniques. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated by generating a scalable adjoint CFD solver for multicore CPUs and Xeon Phi accelerators.

algorithmic differentiation↗

Missile defense and strategic stability: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea

South Korea is threatened by its troubled relationship with North Korea. North Korea possesses a large cache of missiles as well as chemical and biological weapons, and the future potential to mount nuclear weapons on its missiles. The United States is also challenged because of its defense commitments to Seoul. As a countermeasure, the United States and South Korea decided to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defenses in South Korea. However, China has objected. Chinese scholars believe the THAAD radar would be able to track Chinese inter-continental ballistic missiles, thereby weakening their deterrent. A technical analysis does not support this assertion. But, it is vital for South Korea, given its proximity and economic interdependence, to reassure China. The United States Forces Korea will deploy THAD and that is not a commitment by Seoul to become part of U.S.-led missile defenses in the Asia-Pacific.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Belle II Conditions Database

The Belle II experiment at KEK is preparing for taking first collision data in early 2018. For the success of the experiment it is essential to have information about varying conditions available to systems worldwide in a fast and efficient manner that is straightforward for both the user and maintainer. The Belle II Conditions Database was designed to make maintenance as easy as possible. To this end, a HTTP REST service was developed with industry-standard tools such as Swagger for the API interface development, Payara for the Java EE application server, and the Hazelcast in-memory data grid for support of scalable caching as well as transparent distribution of the service across multiple sites. On the client side, the online and offline software has to be able to obtain conditions data from the Belle II Conditions Database in a robust and reliable way under very different situations. As such the client side interface to the Belle II Conditions Database has been designed with a variety of access mechanisms which allow the software to be used with and without an internet connection. Different methods to access the payload information are implemented to allow for a high level of customization per site and to simplify testing of new payloads locally. Changes to the conditions data are usually handled transparently but users can actively check whether an object has changed or register callback functions to be called whenever a conditions data object is updated. In addition a command line user interface has been developed to simplify inspection and modification of the database contents.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

A Conditions Data Management System for HEP Experiments

Conditions data infrastructure for both ATLAS and CMS have to deal with the management of several Terabytes of data. Distributed computing access to this data requires particular care and attention to manage request-rates of up to several tens of kHz. Thanks to the large overlap in use cases and requirements, ATLAS and CMS have worked towards a common solution for conditions data management with the aim of using this design for data-taking in Run 3. In the meantime other experiments, including NA62, have expressed an interest in this cross- experiment initiative. For experiments with a smaller payload volume and complexity, there is particular interest in simplifying the payload storage. The conditions data management model is implemented in a small set of relational database tables. A prototype access toolkit consisting of an intermediate web server has been implemented, using standard technologies available in the Java community. Access is provided through a set of REST services for which the API has been described in a generic way using standard Open API specications, implemented in Swagger. Such a solution allows the automatic generation of client code and server stubs and further allows changes in the backend technology transparently. An important advantage of using a REST API for conditions access is the possibility of caching identical URLs, addressing one of the biggest challenges that large distributed computing solutions impose on conditions data access, avoiding direct DB access by means of standard web proxy solutions.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Striped Data Server for Scalable Parallel Data Analysis

A columnar data representation is known to be an efficient way for data storage, specifically in cases when the analysis is often done based only on a small fragment of the available data structures. A data representation like Apache Parquet is a step forward from a columnar representation, which splits data horizontally to allow for easy parallelization of data analysis. Based on the general idea of columnar data storage, working on the [LDRD Project], we have developed a striped data representation, which, we believe, is better suited to the needs of High Energy Physics data analysis. A traditional columnar approach allows for efficient data analysis of complex structures. While keeping all the benefits of columnar data representations, the striped mechanism goes further by enabling easy parallelization of computations without requiring special hardware. We will present an implementation and some performance characteristics of such a data representation mechanism using a distributed no-SQL database or a local file system, unified under the same API and data representation model. The representation is efficient and at the same time simple so that it allows for a common data model and APIs for wide range of underlying storage mechanisms such as distributed no-SQL databases and local file systems. Striped storage adopts Numpy arrays as its basic data representation format, which makes it easy and efficient to use in Python applications. The Striped Data Server is a web service, which allows to hide the server implementation details from the end user, easily exposes data to WAN users, and allows to utilize well known and developed data caching solutions to further increase data access efficiency. We are considering the Striped Data Server as the core of an enterprise scale data analysis platform for High Energy Physics and similar areas of data processing. As a result, we have been testing this architecture with a 2TB dataset from a CMS dark matter search and plan to expand it to multiple 100 TB or even PB scale. We will present the striped format, Striped Data Server architecture and performance test results.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Cloud services for the Fermilab scientific stakeholders

As part of the Fermilab/KISTI cooperative research project, Fermilab has successfully run an experimental simulation workflow at scale on a federation of Amazon Web Services (AWS), FermiCloud, and local FermiGrid resources. We used the CernVM-FS (CVMFS) file system to deliver the application software. We established Squid caching servers in AWS as well, using the Shoal system to let each individual virtual machine find the closest squid server. We also developed an automatic virtual machine conversion system so that we could transition virtual machines made on FermiCloud to Amazon Web Services. We used this system to successfully run a cosmic ray simulation of the NOvA detector at Fermilab, making use of both AWS spot pricing and network bandwidth discounts to minimize the cost. On FermiCloud we also were able to run the workflow at the scale of 1000 virtual machines, using a private network routable inside of Fermilab. As a result, we present in detail the technological improvements that were used to make this work a reality.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Data preservation at the Fermilab Tevatron

The Fermilab Tevatron collider's data-taking run ended in September 2011, yielding a dataset with rich scientific potential. The CDF and DO experiments each have nearly 9 PB of collider and simulated data stored on tape. A large computing infrastructure consisting of tape storage, disk cache, and distributed grid computing for physics analysis with the Tevatron data is present at Fermilab. The Fermilab Run II data preservation project intends to keep this analysis capability sustained through the year 2020 or beyond. To achieve this, we are implementing a system that utilizes virtualization, automated validation, and migration to new standards in both software and data storage technology as well as leveraging resources available from currently-running experiments at Fermilab. Furthermore, these efforts will provide useful lessons in ensuring long-term data access for numerous experiments throughout high-energy physics, and provide a roadmap for high-quality scientific output for years to come.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Stochastic optimization of GeantV code by use of genetic algorithms

GeantV is a complex system based on the interaction of different modules needed for detector simulation, which include transport of particles in fields, physics models simulating their interactions with matter and a geometrical modeler library for describing the detector and locating the particles and computing the path length to the current volume boundary. The GeantV project is recasting the classical simulation approach to get maximum benefit from SIMD/MIMD computational architectures and highly massive parallel systems. This involves finding the appropriate balance between several aspects influencing computational performance (floating-point performance, usage of off-chip memory bandwidth, specification of cache hierarchy, etc.) and handling a large number of program parameters that have to be optimized to achieve the best simulation throughput. This optimization task can be treated as a black-box optimization problem, which requires searching the optimum set of parameters using only point-wise function evaluations. Here, the goal of this study is to provide a mechanism for optimizing complex systems (high energy physics particle transport simulations) with the help of genetic algorithms and evolution strategies as tuning procedures for massive parallel simulations. One of the described approaches is based on introducing a specific multivariate analysis operator that could be used in case of resource expensive or time consuming evaluations of fitness functions, in order to speed-up the convergence of the black-box optimization problem.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Web Proxy Auto Discovery for the WLCG

All four of the LHC experiments depend on web proxies (that is, squids) at each grid site to support software distribution by the CernVM FileSystem (CVMFS). CMS and ATLAS also use web proxies for conditions data distributed through the Frontier Distributed Database caching system. ATLAS & CMS each have their own methods for their grid jobs to find out which web proxies to use for Frontier at each site, and CVMFS has a third method. Those diverse methods limit usability and flexibility, particularly for opportunistic use cases, where an experiment’s jobs are run at sites that do not primarily support that experiment. This paper describes a new Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) system for discovering the addresses of web proxies. The system is based on an internet standard called Web Proxy Auto Discovery (WPAD). WPAD is in turn based on another standard called Proxy Auto Configuration (PAC). Both the Frontier and CVMFS clients support this standard. The input into the WLCG system comes from squids registered in the ATLAS Grid Information System (AGIS) and CMS SITECONF files, cross-checked with squids registered by sites in the Grid Configuration Database (GOCDB) and the OSG Information Management (OIM) system, and combined with some exceptions manually configured by people from ATLAS and CMS who operate WLCG Squid monitoring. WPAD servers at CERN respond to http requests from grid nodes all over the world with a PAC file that lists available web proxies, based on IP addresses matched from a database that contains the IP address ranges registered to organizations. Large grid sites are encouraged to supply their own WPAD web servers for more flexibility, to avoid being affected by short term long distance network outages, and to offload the WLCG WPAD servers at CERN. The CERN WPAD servers additionally support requests from jobs running at non-grid sites (particularly for LHC@Home) which it directs to the nearest publicly accessible web proxy servers. Furthermore, the responses to those requests are geographically ordered based on a separate database that maps IP addresses to longitude and latitude.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Improving the accuracy and efficiency of quantum connected moments expansions

The still-maturing noisy intermediate-scale quantum technology faces strict limitations on the algorithms that can be implemented efficiently. In the realm of quantum chemistry, the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm has become ubiquitous, with many variations. Alternatively, a promising new avenue has been unraveled by the quantum variants of techniques grounded on expansions of the moments of the Hamiltonian, notably the connected moments expansion (CMX) and the Peeters–Devreese–Soldatov (PDS) energy functional. Common to those approaches is that, upon preparing an approximate ground state used to compute the necessary moments, the accuracy of the estimated ground state energy depends on the degree of overlap between the prepared state and the true ground state. Thus, we use the ADAPT-VQE algorithm to test shallow circuit construction strategies for the purpose of increasing the overlap with the exact ground state, validated by the sizable accuracy improvement herein reported in the PDS and CMX ground state energies. We also show that we can take advantage of the fact that the terms to be measured are highly recurring in different moments, incurring a substantial reduction in the number of necessary measurements. Finally, by coupling this measurement caching with a threshold that determines whether a given term is to be measured based on its associated scalar coefficient, we observe a further reduction in the number of circuit implementations while allowing for tunable accuracy.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

KG-Hub—building and exchanging biological knowledge graphs

Knowledge graphs (KGs) are a powerful approach for integrating heterogeneous data and making inferences in biology and many other domains, but a coherent solution for constructing, exchanging, and facilitating the downstream use of KGs is lacking. Here we present KG-Hub, a platform that enables standardized construction, exchange, and reuse of KGs. Features include a simple, modular extract–transform–load pattern for producing graphs compliant with Biolink Model (a high-level data model for standardizing biological data), easy integration of any OBO (Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies) ontology, cached downloads of upstream data sources, versioned and automatically updated builds with stable URLs, web-browsable storage of KG artifacts on cloud infrastructure, and easy reuse of transformed subgraphs across projects. Current KG-Hub projects span use cases including COVID-19 research, drug repurposing, microbial–environmental interactions, and rare disease research. KG-Hub is equipped with tooling to easily analyze and manipulate KGs. KG-Hub is also tightly integrated with graph machine learning (ML) tools which allow automated graph ML, including node embeddings and training of models for link prediction and node classification.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Flexible Data-Aware Scheduling for Workflows over an In-Memory Object Store

This paper explores novel techniques for improving the performance of many-task workflows based on the Swift scripting language. We propose novel programmer options for automated distributed data placement and task scheduling. These options trigger a data placement mechanism used for distributing intermediate workflow data over the servers of Hercules, a distributed key-value store that can be used to cache file system data. We demonstrate that these new mechanisms can significantly improve the aggregated throughput of many-task workflows with up to 86x, reduce the contention on the shared file system, exploit the data locality, and trade off locality and load balance.

Duro, Francisco Rodrigo↗

AXI4MLIR: User-Driven Automatic Host Code Generation for Custom AXI-Based Accelerators

Tensor algebra operations represent an important class of algorithms used across many applications, including machine learning, scientific computing, and data analytics. As a result, the efficient generation of custom accelerators for tensor operations has received increased attention. Previous efforts have produced automated tools enabling users to prototype and explore optimized accelerators. However, little effort has been focused on the host-accelerator interaction in these tools. Efficient use of hardware accelerators requires knowledge about the accelerator's capabilities (operations, data formats, and opcode support), the host CPU microarchitecture (e.g., memory hierarchy), the host-accelerator interface, and the application's features (which code regions should be mapped onto an accelerator). Manually rewriting the original applications to facilitate improved custom accelerator mapping is an error-prone and time-consuming endeavor. To cope with this, we propose AXI4MLIR, a new framework to automatically generate and optimize the communication between the host CPU and arbitrary accelerators that implement linear algebra algorithms. AXI4MLIR extends the MLIR compiler framework to automatically generate efficient host-accelerator driver code for accelerators with AXI-based interfaces. Our compiler extensions enable automatic driver code generation while carefully considering the host's memory hierarchy and target accelerator features. To demonstrate the flexibility and utility of AXI4MLIR, we test it with diverse use cases that include different types of accelerators, tiling scenarios, and dataflow schemes. We compare our experimental results to manual implementations of host-accelerator driver code and find that our approach can reduce CPU cache references by 56% and deliver up to a 1.65x speedup.

Bohm Agostini, Nicolas↗

Rapidly Measuring Loop Footprints

Knowing a loop’s footprint — the unique data items it accesses — enables important locality and capacity analysis. Unfortunately, current methods for computing footprint cause integer factors of slowdown and are therefore difficult to use with realistic inputs. Current methods are slow because they are based on software tracing of load instructions and data addresses. We present an approach that combines lightweight measurements and static binary analysis. We use static analysis to reason about each load’s expected reuse. We then calculate the footprint for each loop using inference rules informed by measurements from common performance counters. We validate our method on benchmarks that vary access patterns (strided vs. unpredictable), reuse (varying and repeated accesses per element), and sparsity (all words in a cache line vs. some). For strided patterns, errors are within 1%; for unpredictable ones, errors are 5–10%. Our overheads are under 10%. A tool based on software tracing has an error of less than 1%, but either introduces at least 130× overhead or hangs.

Kilic, Ozgur O.↗

Approximate Computing Techniques for Iterative Graph Algorithms

Approximate computing enables processing of large-scale graphs by trading off quality for performance. Approximate computing techniques have become critical not only due to the emergence of parallel architectures but also the availability of large scale datasets enabling data-driven discovery. Using two prototypical graph algorithms, PageRank and community detection, we present several approximate computing heuristics to scale the performance with minimal loss of accuracy. We present several heuristics including loop perforation, data caching, incomplete graph coloring and synchronization, and evaluate their efficiency. We demonstrate performance improvements of up to 83% for PageRank and up to 450x for community detection, with low impact of accuracy for both the algorithms. We expect the proposed approximate techniques will enable scalable graph analytics on data of importance to several applications in science and their subsequent adoption to scale similar graph algorithms.

Panyala, Ajay R.↗