Enabling Practical Transparent Checkpointing for MPI: A Topological Sort Approach

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xu, Yao, Cooperman, Gene
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Xu, Yao
Cooperman, Gene
author_facet Xu, Yao
Cooperman, Gene
contents MPI is the de facto standard for parallel computing on a cluster of computers. Checkpointing is an important component in any strategy for software resilience and for long-running jobs that must be executed by chaining together time-bounded resource allocations. This work solves an old problem: a practical and general algorithm for transparent checkpointing of MPI that is both efficient and compatible with most of the latest network software. Transparent checkpointing is attractive due to its generality and ease of use for most MPI application developers. Earlier efforts at transparent checkpointing for MPI, one decade ago, had two difficult problems: (i) by relying on a specific MPI implementation tied to a specific network technology; and (ii) by failing to demonstrate sufficiently low runtime overhead. Problem (i) (network dependence) was already solved in 2019 by MANA's introduction of split processes. Problem (ii) (efficient runtime overhead) is solved in this work. This paper introduces an approach that avoids these limitations, employing a novel topological sort to algorithmically determine a safe future synchronization point. The algorithm is valid for both blocking and non-blocking collective communication in MPI. We demonstrate the efficacy and scalability of our approach through both micro-benchmarks and a set of five real-world MPI applications, notably including the widely used VASP (Vienna Ab Initio Simulation Package), which is responsible for 11% of the workload on the Perlmutter supercomputer at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. VASP was previously cited as a special challenge for checkpointing, in part due to its multi-algorithm codes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_02218
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enabling Practical Transparent Checkpointing for MPI: A Topological Sort Approach
Xu, Yao
Cooperman, Gene
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
D.1.3
MPI is the de facto standard for parallel computing on a cluster of computers. Checkpointing is an important component in any strategy for software resilience and for long-running jobs that must be executed by chaining together time-bounded resource allocations. This work solves an old problem: a practical and general algorithm for transparent checkpointing of MPI that is both efficient and compatible with most of the latest network software. Transparent checkpointing is attractive due to its generality and ease of use for most MPI application developers. Earlier efforts at transparent checkpointing for MPI, one decade ago, had two difficult problems: (i) by relying on a specific MPI implementation tied to a specific network technology; and (ii) by failing to demonstrate sufficiently low runtime overhead. Problem (i) (network dependence) was already solved in 2019 by MANA's introduction of split processes. Problem (ii) (efficient runtime overhead) is solved in this work. This paper introduces an approach that avoids these limitations, employing a novel topological sort to algorithmically determine a safe future synchronization point. The algorithm is valid for both blocking and non-blocking collective communication in MPI. We demonstrate the efficacy and scalability of our approach through both micro-benchmarks and a set of five real-world MPI applications, notably including the widely used VASP (Vienna Ab Initio Simulation Package), which is responsible for 11% of the workload on the Perlmutter supercomputer at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. VASP was previously cited as a special challenge for checkpointing, in part due to its multi-algorithm codes.
title Enabling Practical Transparent Checkpointing for MPI: A Topological Sort Approach
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
D.1.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02218