GPU initiated OpenSHMEM: Correct and eicient intra-kernel networking for DGPUs

Abstract

Current state-of-the-art in GPU networking utilizes a host-centric, kernel-boundary communication model that reduces performance and increases code complexity. To address these concerns, recent works have explored performing network operations from within a GPU kernel itself. However, these approaches typically involve the CPU in the critical path, which leads to high latency and ineicient utilization of network and/or GPU resources. In this work, we introduce GPU Initiated OpenSHMEM (GIO), a new intra-kernel PGAS programming model and runtime that enables GPUs to communicate directly with a NIC without the intervention of the CPU. We accomplish this by exploring the GPU’s coarse-grained memory model and correcting semantic mismatches when GPUs wish to directly interact with the network. GIO also reduces latency by relying on a novel template-based design to minimize the overhead of initiating a network operation. We illustrate that for structured applications like a Jacobi 2D stencil, GIO can improve application performance by up to 40% compared to traditional kernel-boundary networking. Furthermore, we demonstrate that on irregular applications like Sparse Triangular Solve (SpTS), GIO provides up to 44% improvement compared to existing intra-kernel networking schemes.