Performance characteristics of a network of commodity multiprocessors for the NAS benchmarks using a hybrid memory model
Franck Cappello, Olivier Richard · 1999
Multiprocessors and high performance networks offer the opportunity to construct CLUster of MultiProcessors' (CLUMPs') and use them as parallel computing platforms. The distinctive feature of the CLUMPs' over traditional parallel computers' is their hybrid memory model (message passing between the nodes and shared memory inside the nodes). In this paper, we investigate the performance &aracteristics of a cluster of biprocessor PCs for the NAS 2.3 parallel Ben&mark using a programming model based on MPI for message passing between biprocessor nodes and OpenMP for shared memory inside biprocessor nodes. The paper provides several contributions. These include: a) Speed-up measurements' of a cluster of biprocessor PCs over a cluster of uniprocessor PCs using the hybrid memory model b) A detailed analysis of the speed-up results from a breakdown of the ben&marks execution time and c) A performance comparison of a commodity CLUMP with some high performance parallel computers'.