Sparsity-Aware Roofline Models for Sparse Matrix-Matrix Multiplication

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Qian, Matthew, Ramadan, Yahia, Anubha, Suhita, Azad, Ariful
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Qian, Matthew
Ramadan, Yahia
Anubha, Suhita
Azad, Ariful
author_facet Qian, Matthew
Ramadan, Yahia
Anubha, Suhita
Azad, Ariful
contents Sparse matrix-dense matrix multiplication (SpMM) is a critical kernel in scientific computing, graph analytics, and machine learning, whose performance is often constrained by memory bandwidth. In this work, we investigate the applicability and limitations of roofline modeling for SpMM by explicitly accounting for the impact of matrix sparsity structure on arithmetic intensity and attainable performance. We evaluate three SpMM implementations: Compressed Sparse Row (CSR), Compressed Sparse Blocks (CSB), and Intel's Math Kernel Library (MKL). Each implementation was tested using large-scale matrices from the SuiteSparse collection and grouped by sparsity pattern, including block-structured, banded (diagonal), scale-free, and uniformly random matrices. We derive sparsity-aware roofline models that incorporate memory traffic, cache locality, and blocking behavior, and demonstrate that a single model is insufficient to accurately predict performance across diverse structures. Experiments were conducted on an AMD-based Perlmutter compute node with a varying number of columns in the dense matrix. In particular, blocking and structured sparsity significantly alter effective arithmetic intensity. The results show that accurate roofline-based performance analysis of SpMM requires sparsity-aware modeling, and that data layout and blocking strategies must be evaluated in the context of matrix structure rather than through a single unified model.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_06637
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sparsity-Aware Roofline Models for Sparse Matrix-Matrix Multiplication
Qian, Matthew
Ramadan, Yahia
Anubha, Suhita
Azad, Ariful
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Sparse matrix-dense matrix multiplication (SpMM) is a critical kernel in scientific computing, graph analytics, and machine learning, whose performance is often constrained by memory bandwidth. In this work, we investigate the applicability and limitations of roofline modeling for SpMM by explicitly accounting for the impact of matrix sparsity structure on arithmetic intensity and attainable performance. We evaluate three SpMM implementations: Compressed Sparse Row (CSR), Compressed Sparse Blocks (CSB), and Intel's Math Kernel Library (MKL). Each implementation was tested using large-scale matrices from the SuiteSparse collection and grouped by sparsity pattern, including block-structured, banded (diagonal), scale-free, and uniformly random matrices. We derive sparsity-aware roofline models that incorporate memory traffic, cache locality, and blocking behavior, and demonstrate that a single model is insufficient to accurately predict performance across diverse structures. Experiments were conducted on an AMD-based Perlmutter compute node with a varying number of columns in the dense matrix. In particular, blocking and structured sparsity significantly alter effective arithmetic intensity. The results show that accurate roofline-based performance analysis of SpMM requires sparsity-aware modeling, and that data layout and blocking strategies must be evaluated in the context of matrix structure rather than through a single unified model.
title Sparsity-Aware Roofline Models for Sparse Matrix-Matrix Multiplication
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06637