Red-Blue Pebbling Revisited: Near Optimal Parallel Matrix Multiplication

Authors: Grzegorz Kwasniewski (ETH Zurich), Marko Kabic (ETH Zurich, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)), Maciej Besta (ETH Zurich), Raffaele Solca (ETH Zurich, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)), Joost VandeVondele (ETH Zurich, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)), Torsten Hoefler (ETH Zurich)

Abstract: We propose COSMA: a parallel matrix-matrix multiplication algorithm that is near communication-optimal for all combinations of matrix dimensions, processor counts, and memory sizes. The key idea behind COSMA is to derive an optimal (up to a factor of 0.03% for 10MB of fast memory) sequential schedule and then parallelize it, preserving I/O optimality. To achieve this, we use the red-blue pebble game to precisely model MMM dependencies and derive a constructive and tight sequential and parallel I/O lower bound proofs. Compared to 2D or 3D algorithms, which fix processor decomposition upfront and then map it to the matrix dimensions, it reduces communication volume by up to sqrt{3}. COSMA outperforms the established ScaLAPACK, CARMA, and CTF algorithms in all scenarios up to 12.8x (2.2x on average), achieving up to 88% of Piz Daint's peak performance. Our work does not require any hand tuning and is maintained as an open source implementation.


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