Enhancing Interoperability in Task-based Programming Models through Common Low-Level Interfaces

Research topic and goals

Task-based programming models are a promising approach to exploiting complex distributed and heterogeneous systems. Recently, these models have emerged as a viable alternative to traditional message-passing and fork-join approaches, reflecting the research community’s growing interest in their numerous benefits. Despite these advantages, the broader adoption within the scientific and industrial sectors remains limited. A major barrier is the poor interoperability among existing runtime systems, which prevents the development of complex applications through the integration of multiple components or libraries written in different task-based programming models. Such interoperability issues often lead to oversubscription, significantly impairing applications’ performance. Maintainability presents another significant challenge within task-based programming models, encountered by projects at varying stages. The relatively modest level of effort anticipated in a future steady-state raises critical questions about the sustainability of support for these models. Can the organization of software, potentially through the utilization of shared code bases for sub-components, facilitate easier maintenance? Such an approach could potentially streamline the support process, thereby enhancing the long-term viability and operational efficiency of task-based systems.

Our project aims to address these challenges by identifying the low-level primitives necessary for building efficient and scalable task-based runtime systems. Based on these findings, we will develop unified low-level tasking interfaces to enhance interoperability among different runtime systems, optimizing performance and encouraging broader adoption of task-based programming models.

Visits and meetings

We had a BoF session in the Kobe workshop, where we decided to start this project. There are no planned visits yet.

Impact and publications

• Solve interoperability problems between task-based programming models
• Increase software development productivity and reach of task-based programming models
• Research and document needs from higher-level programming systems (Charm++, HPX, Legion, OpenMP, OmpSs, ..) for the task-based execution systems
• Explore possibility of creating a standard that allows for different use cases currently served, either via a flexible design or allowing for extensions

Future plans

not defined yet.

References

1. DBLP:conf/ipps/0006S024

   BibTeX Abstract

   Álvarez, David, Kevin Sala, and Vicenç Beltran. 2024. “NOS-V: Co-Executing HPC Applications Using System-Wide Task Scheduling.” In IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2024, San Francisco, CA, USA, May 27-31, 2024, 312–24. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS57955.2024.00035.

   @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/ipps/0006S024,
     author = {{\'{A}}lvarez, David and Sala, Kevin and Beltran, Vicen{\c{c}}},
     title = {nOS-V: Co-Executing {HPC} Applications Using System-Wide Task Scheduling},
     booktitle = {{IEEE} International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium,
                       {IPDPS} 2024, San Francisco, CA, USA, May 27-31, 2024},
     pages = {312--324},
     publisher = {{IEEE}},
     year = {2024},
     url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS57955.2024.00035},
     doi = {10.1109/IPDPS57955.2024.00035},
     timestamp = {Wed, 17 Jul 2024 15:59:37 +0200},
     biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ipps/0006S024.bib},
     bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
   }
   

2. 10.1007/978-3-642-03869-3_80

   BibTeX Abstract

   Augonnet, Cédric, Samuel Thibault, Raymond Namyst, and Pierre-André Wacrenier. 2009. “StarPU: A Unified Platform for Task Scheduling on Heterogeneous Multicore Architectures.” In Euro-Par 2009 Parallel Processing, edited by Henk Sips, Dick Epema, and Hai-Xiang Lin, 863–74. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

   @inproceedings{10.1007/978-3-642-03869-3_80,
     author = {Augonnet, C{\'e}dric and Thibault, Samuel and Namyst, Raymond and Wacrenier, Pierre-Andr{\'e}},
     editor = {Sips, Henk and Epema, Dick and Lin, Hai-Xiang},
     title = {StarPU: A Unified Platform for Task Scheduling on Heterogeneous Multicore Architectures},
     booktitle = {Euro-Par 2009 Parallel Processing},
     year = {2009},
     publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},
     address = {Berlin, Heidelberg},
     pages = {863--874},
     isbn = {978-3-642-03869-3}
   }
   

   In the field of HPC, the current hardware trend is to design multiprocessor architectures that feature heterogeneous technologies such as specialized coprocessors (e.g. Cell/BE SPUs) or data-parallel accelerators (e.g. GPGPUs).
3. 508060

   BibTeX Abstract

   Kale, L.V., M. Bhandarkar, N. Jagathesan, S. Krishnan, and J. Yelon. 1996. “Converse: an Interoperable Framework for Parallel Programming.” In Proceedings of International Conference on Parallel Processing, 212–17. https://doi.org/10.1109/IPPS.1996.508060.

   @inproceedings{508060,
     author = {Kale, L.V. and Bhandarkar, M. and Jagathesan, N. and Krishnan, S. and Yelon, J.},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of International Conference on Parallel Processing},
     title = {Converse: an interoperable framework for parallel programming},
     year = {1996},
     volume = {},
     number = {},
     pages = {212-217},
     keywords = {Parallel programming;Object oriented programming;Parallel languages;Runtime},
     doi = {10.1109/IPPS.1996.508060}
   }