Task-queue based hybrid parallelism: A case study

Abstract

In this paper we report on our experiences with hybrid parallelism in PARDISO, a high-performance sparse linear solver. We start with the OpenMP-parallel numerical factorization algorithm and reorganize it using a central dynamic task queue to be able to add message passing functionality. The hybrid version allows the solver to run on a larger number of processors in a cost effective way with very reasonable performance. A speed-up of more than nine running on a four-node quad Itanium 2 SMP cluster is achieved in spite of the fact that a large potential to minimize MPI communication is not yet exploited in the first version of the implementation. © Springer-Verlag 2004.