How to evaluate various commonly used program classification methods?

Abstract

Understanding the characteristics of scientific computing programs has been of great importance due to its close relationship with the design and implementation of program optimization methods. Generally, scientific computing programs can be divided into three categories according to their computing, memory access and communication characteristics, namely compute-intensive, memory-intensive and communication-intensive, respectively. There are more than one commonly used program classification methods, particularly for compute-intensive and memory-intensive programs. In most cases, all kinds of classification methods have consistent results but occasionally different classification results also occur. Why are there occasionally inconsistent classification results and where? How to understand such inconsistencies and what is the reason behind that? We answer these questions by analyzing four representative program classification methods (IPC, MPKI, MEM/Uop and Roofline) on two platforms. Firstly, we discover some occasional inconsistency cases, the inconsistency from various indicators, the inconsistency from multi-phase characteristics and the inconsistency from various platforms, followed by some possible reasons. Secondly, we explore the impact of threshold settings on classification inconsistencies. All the experiment and analysis results and the data collected from other references prove that different classification methods have the same classification results in most cases but occasionally bring about inconsistencies especially for in-between programs that are between memory-intensive and compute-intensive programs, which have a bad impact on some optimization algorithms.