Experimental analysis of communication/data-conditional aspects of a mixed-mode parallel architecture via synthetic computations

Abstract

Experimentation aimed at determining the potential benefit of mixed-mode SIMD/MIMD (single instruction, multiple data/multiple instruction, multiple data) parallel architectures is reported. The experimentation is based on timing measurements made on the PASM (Partitionable SIMD/MIMD) system prototype utilizing carefully coded synthetic variations of a well-known algorithm. The synthetic algorithms used to measure and evaluate this system were based on bitonic sorting of sequences stored in the processing elements. This computation was mapped to both the hybrids of the SIMD and MIMD modes. The computations were coded in these four ways and experiments were performed that explore the tradeoffs among them. The results of these experiments are presented and discussed, with special consideration of the effects of the system's architecture. The goal is to obtain implementation-independent analyses of the attributes of mixed-mode parallel processing with respect to the computational characteristics of the application being examined.