Date: 2019-10-07
Audience: SG1, SG14
Authors: Gordon Brown, Ruyman Reyes, Michael Wong, H. Carter Edwards, Thomas Rodgers, Mark Hoemmen
Contributors: Patrice Roy, Carl Cook, Jeff Hammond, Hartmut Kaiser, Christian Trott, Paul Blinzer, Alex Voicu, Nat Goodspeed, Tony Tye, Paul Blinzer, Chris Kohlhoff
Emails: gordon@codeplay.com, ruyman@codeplay.com, michael@codeplay.com, hedwards@nvidia.com, rodgert@twrodgers.com, mhoemme@sandia.gov
Reply to: gordon@codeplay.com
bulk_execution_affinity_t
properties so they are now hints that request the executor provide a particular pattern of binding, rather than a guarantee.concurrency_t
.execution_locality_intersection_t
.memory_locality_intersection_t
.execution_resource
.execution_resource
: it now either consistently identifies some underlying resource, or is invalid; context creation rejects an invalid resource.sterthis_thread::bind
& this_thread::unbind
interfaces.execution_resource
s iterable by replacing execution_resource::resources
with execution_resource::begin
and execution_resource::end
.size
and operator[]
for execution_resource
.this_system::get_resources
to this_system::discover_topology
.memory_resource
to represent the memory component of a system topology.can_place_memory
and can_place_agents
from the execution_resource
as these are no longer required.memory_resource
and allocator
from the execution_context
as these no longer make sense.affinity_query
to be between an execution_resource
and a memory_resource
.this_thread::bind
& this_thread::unbind
for binding and unbinding a thread of execution to an execution resource.bulk_execution_affinity
executor properties for specifying affinity binding patterns on bulk execution functions.This paper is the result of a request from SG1 at the 2018 San Diego meeting to split P0796: Supporting Heterogeneous & Distributed Computing Through Affinity [35] into two separate papers, one for the high-level interface and one for the low-level interface. This paper focusses on the high-level interface: a series of properties for querying affinity relationships and requesting affinity on work being executed. P0437 will focus on the low-level interface: a mechanism for discovering the topology and affinity properties of a given system, however this paper was not submitted in this mailing.
The aim of this paper is to provide a number of executor properties that if supported allow the user of an executor to query and manipulate the binding of execution agents and the underlying execution resources of the threads of execution they are run on.
Affinity refers to the “closeness” in terms of memory access performance, between running code, the hardware execution resource on which the code runs, and the data that the code accesses. A hardware execution resource has “more affinity” to a part of memory or to some data, if it has lower latency and/or higher bandwidth when accessing that memory / those data.
On almost all computer architectures, the cost of accessing different data may differ. Most computers have caches that are associated with specific processing units. If the operating system moves a thread or process from one processing unit to another, the thread or process will no longer have data in its new cache that it had in its old cache. This may make the next access to those data slower. Many computers also have a Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA), which means that even though all processing units see a single memory in terms of programming model, different processing units may still have more affinity to some parts of memory than others. NUMA exists because it is difficult to scale non-NUMA memory systems to the performance needed by today’s highly parallel computers and applications.
One strategy to improve applications’ performance, given the importance of affinity, is processor and memory binding. Keeping a process bound to a specific thread and local memory region optimizes cache affinity. It also reduces context switching and unnecessary scheduler activity. Since memory accesses to remote locations incur higher latency and/or lower bandwidth, control of thread placement to enforce affinity within parallel applications is crucial to fuel all the cores and to exploit the full performance of the memory subsystem on NUMA computers.
Operating systems (OSes) traditionally take responsibility for assigning threads or processes to run on processing units. However, OSes may use high-level policies for this assignment that do not necessarily match the optimal usage pattern for a given application. Application developers must leverage the placement of memory and placement of threads for best performance on current and future architectures. For C++ developers to achieve this, native support for placement of threads and memory is critical for application portability. We will refer to this as the affinity problem.
The affinity problem is especially challenging for applications whose behavior changes over time or is hard to predict, or when different applications interfere with each other’s performance. Today, most OSes already can group processing units according to their locality and distribute processes, while keeping threads close to the initial thread, or even avoid migrating threads and maintain first touch policy. Nevertheless, most programs can change their work distribution, especially in the presence of nested parallelism.
Frequently, data are initialized at the beginning of the program by the initial thread and are used by multiple threads. While some OSes automatically migrate threads or data for better affinity, migration may have high overhead. In an optimal case, the OS may automatically detect which thread access which data most frequently, or it may replicate data which are read by multiple threads, or migrate data which are modified and used by threads residing on remote locality groups. However, the OS often does a reasonable job, if the machine is not overloaded, if the application carefully uses first-touch allocation, and if the program does not change its behavior with respect to locality.
The affinity interface we propose should help computers achieve a much higher fraction of peak memory bandwidth when using parallel algorithms. In the future, we plan to extend this to heterogeneous and distributed computing. This follows the lead of OpenMP [2], which has plans to integrate its affinity model with its heterogeneity model [3]. (One of the authors of this document participated in the design of OpenMP’s affinity model.)
To identify the requirements for supporting affinity we have looked at a number of use cases where affinity between memory locality and execution can provide better performance.
Consider the following code example (Listing 1) where the C++17 parallel STL algorithm for_each
is used to modify the elements of a std::vector
data
on an executor that will execute on a NUMA system with a number of CPU cores. However the memory is allocated by the std::vector
default allocator immediately during the construction of data
on memory local to the calling thread of execution. This means that the memory allocated for data
may have poor locality to all of the NUMA regions on the system, other than the one in which the constructor executed. Therefore, accesses in the parallel for_each
made by threads in other NUMA regions will incur high latency. In this example, this is avoided by migrating data
to have better affinity with the NUMA regions on the system using an executor with the bulk_execution_affinity.scatter
property applied, before it is accessed by the for_each
. Note that a mechanism for migration is not yet specified in this paper, so this example currently uses an arbitrary vendor API, vendor_api::migrate
. Our intention is that a future revision of this paper will specify a standard mechanism for migration
// NUMA executor representing N NUMA regions.
numa_executor exec;
// Storage required for vector allocated on construction local to current thread
// of execution, (N == 0).
std::vector<float> data(N * SIZE);
// Require the NUMA executor to bind its migration of memory to the underlying
// memory resources in a scatter pattern.
auto affinityExec = std::execution::require(exec,
bulk_execution_affinity.scatter);
// Migrate the memory allocated for the vector across the NUMA regions in a
// scatter pattern.
vendor_api::migrate(data, affinityExec);
// Placement of data is local to NUMA region 0, so data for execution on other
// NUMA nodes must is migrated when accessed.
std::for_each(std::execution::par.on(affinityExec), std::begin(data),
std::end(data), [=](float &value) { do_something(value): });
Listing 1: Migrating previously allocated memory.
Now consider a similar code example (Listing 2) where again the C++17 parallel STL algorithm for_each
is used to modify the elements of a std::vector
data
on an executor that will execute on a NUMA system with a number of CPU cores. However, instead of migrating data
to have affinity with the NUMA regions, data
is allocated within a bulk execution by an executor with the bulk_execution_affinity.scatter
property applied so that data
is allocated with affinity. Then when the for_each
is called with the same executor, data
maintains its affinity with the NUMA regions.
// NUMA executor representing N NUMA regions.
numa_executor exec;
// Reserve space in a vector for a unique_ptr for each index in the bulk
// execution.
std::vector<std::unique_ptr<float[SIZE]>> data{};
data.reserve(N);
// Require the NUMA executor to bind its allocation of memory to the underlying
// memory resources in a scatter patter.
auto affinityExec = std::execution::require(exec,
bulk_execution_affinity.scatter);
// Launch a bulk execution that will allocate each unique_ptr in the vector with
// locality to the nearest NUMA region.
affinityExec.bulk_execute([&](size_t id) {
data[id] = std::make_unique<float>(); }, N, sharedFactory);
// Execute a for_each using the same executor so that each unique_ptr in the
// vector maintains its locality.
std::for_each(std::execution::par.on(affinityExec), std::begin(data),
std::end(data), [=](float &value) { do_something(value): });
Listing 2: Aligning memory and process affinity.
In this paper we describe the problem space of affinity for C++, the various challenges which need to be addressed in defining a partitioning and affinity interface for C++, and some suggested solutions. These include:
Wherever possible, we also evaluate how an affinity-based solution could be scaled to support both distributed and heterogeneous systems.
The affinity problem existed for some time, and there are a number of third-party libraries and standards which provide APIs to solve the problem. In order to standardize this process for C++, we must carefully look at all of these approaches and identify which ideas are suitable for adoption into C++. Below is a list of the libraries and standards from which this proposal will draw:
Libraries such as the Portable Hardware Locality (hwloc) library provide a low-level of hardware abstraction, and offer a solution for the portability problem by supporting many platforms and operating systems. This and similar approaches use a tree structure to represent details of CPUs and the memory system. However, even some current systems cannot be represented correctly by a tree, if the number of hops between two sockets varies between socket pairs [2].
Some systems give additional user control through explicit binding of threads to processors through environment variables consumed by various compilers, system commands, or system calls. Examples of system commands include Linux’s taskset
and numactl
, and Windows’ start /affinity
. System call examples include Solaris’ pbind()
, Linux’s sched_setaffinity()
, and Windows’ SetThreadAffinityMask()
.
In order to make decisions about where to place execution or allocate memory in a given system’s resource topology, it is important to understand the concept of affinity between different hardware and software resources. This is usually expressed in terms of latency between two resources. Distance does not need to be symmetric in all architectures. The relative position of two components in a system’s topology does not necessarily indicate their affinity. For example, two cores from two different CPU sockets may have the same latency to access the same NUMA memory node.
This can be scaled to heterogeneous and distributed systems, as the relative affinity between components can apply to discrete heterogeneous and distributed systems as well.
The initial solution proposed by this paper may only target systems with a single addressable memory region. It may therefore exclude certain heterogeneous devices such as some discrete GPUs. However, in order to maintain a unified interface going forward, the initial solution should consider these devices and be able to scale to support them in the future.
In this paper we propose executor properties that can be used for querying the affinity between different hardware and software resources within a system available that are available to executors and to require binding of execution agents to the underlying hardware or software resources in order to achieve performance through data locality. These properties provide a low granularity and is aimed at users who may have little or no knowledge of the system architecture.
The interface described in this paper builds on the existing interface for executors and execution contexts defined in the executors proposal [22].
An execution resource represents an abstraction of a hardware or software layer that guarantees a particular set of affinity properties, where the level of abstraction is implementation-defined. An implementation is permitted to migrate any underlying resources providing it guarantees the affinity properties remain consistent. This allows freedom for the implementor but also consistency for users.
If an execution resource is valid, then it must always point to the same underlying thing. For example, a resource cannot first point to one CPU core, and then suddenly point to a different CPU core. An execution context can thus rely on properties like binding of operating system threads to CPU cores. However, the “thing” to which an execution resource points may be a dynamic, possibly a software-managed pool of hardware. Here are three examples of this phenomenon:
In summary, an execution resource either identifies a thing uniquely, or harmlessly points to nothing.
<execution>
synopsisBelow (Listing 3) is a proposed extension to the <execution>
header.
namespace std {
namespace experimental {
namespace execution {
// Bulk execution affinity properties
struct bulk_execution_affinity_t;
constexpr bulk_execution_affinity_t bulk_execution_affinity;
// Concurrency property
struct concurrency_t;
constexpr concurrency_t concurrency;
// Execution locality intersection property
struct execution_locality_intersection_t;
constexpr execution_locality_intersection_t<DestExecutor>;
// Memory locality intersection property
struct memory_locality_intersection_t;
constexpr memory_locality_intersection_t memory_locality_intersection;
} // execution
} // experimental
} // std
Listing 3: Header synopsis
We propose an executor property group called bulk_execution_affinity
which contains the nested properties none
, balanced
, scatter
and compact
. Each of these properties, if applied to an executor provides a hint to the executor
that requests a particular binding of execution agents to the execution resources associated with the executor in a particular pattern.
Below is an example (Listing 4) of executing a parallel task over 8 threads using bulk_execute
, with the affinity binding bulk_execution_affinity.scatter
. We request affinity binding using prefer
and then check to see if the executor is able to support it using query
.
{
bulk_executor exec;
auto affExec = execution::prefer(exec,
execution::bulk_execution_affinity.scatter);
if (execution::query(affExec, execution::bulk_execution_affinity.scatter)) {
std::cout << "bulk_execute using bulk_execution_affinity.scatter"
<< std::endl;
}
affExec.bulk_execute([](std::size_t i, shared s) {
func(i);
}, 8, sharedFactory);
}
Listing 4: Example of using the bulk_execution_affinity property
The bulk_execution_affinity_t
properties are a group of mutually exclusive behavioral properties (as defined in P0443 [22]) which provide a hint to the executor to, if possible, bind the execution agents created by a bulk invocation from an executor, to the underlying execution resources in a particular pattern relative to their physical closeness.
The bulk_execution_affinity_t
property provides nested property types and objects as described below, where:
e
denotes an executor object of type E
,f
denotes a function object of type F&&
,s
denotes a shape object of type execution::executor_shape<E>
, andsf
denotes a function object of type SF
.Nested Property Type | Nested Property Name | Requirements |
---|---|---|
bulk_execution_affinity_t::none_t |
bulk_execution_affinity_t::none |
A call to e.bulk_execute(f, s, sf) has no requirements on the binding of execution agents to the underlying execution resources. |
bulk_execution_affinity_t::scatter_t |
bulk_execution_scatter_t::scatter |
A call to e.bulk_execute(f, s, sf) should aim to bind the created execution agents to the underlying execution resources (ordered by physical closeness) such that they are distributed equally across the execution resources in a round-robin fashion. If the execution context associated with e is not able to bind the execution agents to the underlying execution resources as requested it should fall back to bulk_execution_affinity_t::none_t . |
bulk_execution_affinity_t::compact_t |
bulk_execution_compact_t::compact |
A call to e.bulk_execute(f, s, sf) should aim to bind the created execution agents to the underlying execution resources such that they are distributed as close as possible to the execution resource of the thread of execution which created them. If the execution context associated with e is not able to bind the execution agents to the underlying execution resources as requested it should fall back to bulk_execution_affinity_t::none_t . |
bulk_execution_affinity_t::balanced_t | bulk_execution_balanced_t::balanced | A call to e.bulk_execute(f, s, sf) should aim to bind the created execution agents to the underlying execution resources (ordered by physical closeness) such that they are distributed equally across the execution resources in a bin packing fashion. If the execution context associated with e is not able to bind the execution agents to the underlying execution resources as requested it should fall back to bulk_execution_affinity_t::none_t . |
[Note: An implementation is free to choose how it maps individual work items to the underlying execution resources, providing it aims to achieve the requested affinity relationship. —end note]
[Note: It’s expected that the default value of
bulk_execution_affinity_t
for most executors bebulk_execution_affinity_t::none_t
. —end note]Note: The terms used for the
bulk_execution_affinity_t
nested properties are derived from the OpenMP properties [[33] including the Intel specific balanced affinity binding [[34] —end note][Note: If two executors
e1
ande2
invoke a bulk execution function in order, whereexecution::query(e1, execution::context) == query(e2, execution::context)
istrue
andexecution::query(e1, execution::bulk_execution_affinity) == query(e2, execution::bulk_execution_affinity)
isfalse
, this will likely result ine1
binding execution agents if necessary to achieve the requested affinity pattern and thene2
rebinding to achieve the new affinity pattern. Rebinding execution agents to execution resources may take substantial time and may affect performance of subsequent code. —end note]
We propose a query-only executor property called concurrency_t
which returns the maximum potential concurrency available to executor.
Below is an example (Listing 5) of querying an executor for the maximum concurrency it can provide via concurrency
.
{
executor exec;
auto maxConcurrency = execution::query(exec, execution::concurrency);
}
Listing 5: Example of using the concurrency property
The concurrency_t
property (Listing 6) is a query-only property as defined in P0443 [22].
struct concurrency_t
{
static constexpr bool is_requirable = false;
static constexpr bool is_preferable = false;
using polymorphic_query_result_type = size_t;
template<class Executor>
static constexpr decltype(auto) static_query_v
= Executor::query(concurrency_t());
};
Listing 6: Proposed specification for concurrency_t
The concurrency_t
property can be used only with query
, which returns the maximum potential concurrency available to the executor. If the value is not well defined or not computable, 0
is returned.
The value returned from execution::query(e, concurrency_t)
, where e
is an executor, shall not change between invocations.
[Note: The expectation here is that the maximum available concurrency for an executor as described here is equivalent to calling
this_thread::hardware_concurrency()
—end note]
We propose a query-only executor property called execution_locality_intersection_t
which returns the maximum potential concurrency that ia available to both of two executors.
Below is an example (Listing 7) of querying whether two executors have overlapping maximum concurrency using execution_locality_intersection
.
{
executor_a execA;
executor_b execB;
auto concurrencyOverlap = execution::query(execA,
execution::execution_locality_intersection(execB));
}
Listing 7: Example of using the concurrency property
The execution_locality_intersection_t
property (Listing 8) is a query-only property as defined in P0443 [22].
struct execution_locality_intersection_t
{
static constexpr bool is_requirable = false;
static constexpr bool is_preferable = false;
using polymorphic_query_result_type = size_t;
template<class Executor, class DestExecutor>
static constexpr decltype(auto) static_query_v
= Executor::query(execution_locality_intersection_t{}(DestExecutor{})));
template <class DestExecutor>
size_t operator()(DestExecutor &&d);
};
Listing 8: Proposed specification for execution_locality_intersection_t
The execution_locality_intersection_t
property can be used only with query
, which returns the maximum potential concurrency available to both executors. If the value is not well defined or not computable, 0
is returned.
The value returned from execution::query(e1, execution_locality_intersection_t(e2))
, where e1
and e2
are executors, shall not change between invocations.
[Note: The expectation here is that the maximum available concurrency for an executor as described here is equivalent to calling
this_thread::hardware_concurrency()
—end note]
We propose a query-only executor property called execution_locality_intersection_t
which specifies whether two executors share a common memory locality, such that memory allocated by those executors both have similar affinity.
This is useful for determining whether memory local to one executor would require migration in order to be local to another executor.
Below is an example (Listing 9) of querying whether two executors have common memory locality execution_locality_intersection
.
{
executor_a execA;
executor_b execB;
auto concurrencyOverlap = execution::query(execA,
execution::execution_locality_intersection(execB));
}
Listing 9: Example of using the concurrency property
The memory_locality_intersection_t
property (Listing 10) is a query-only property as defined in P0443 [22].
struct memory_locality_intersection_t
{
static constexpr bool is_requirable = false;
static constexpr bool is_preferable = false;
using polymorphic_query_result_type = bool;
template<class Executor, class DestExecutor>
static constexpr decltype(auto) static_query_v
= Executor::query(memory_locality_intersection_t{}(DestExecutor{})));
template <class DestExecutor>
bool operator()(DestExecutor &&d);
};
Listing 10: Proposed specification for memory_locality_intersection_t
The memory_locality_intersection_t
property can be used only with query
, which returns true
if both executors share a common address space, and false
otherwise. If the value is not well defined or not computable, false
is returned.
The value returned from execution::query(e1, memory_locality_intersection_t(e2))
, where e1
and e2
are executors, shall not change between invocations.
There are a number of additional features which we are considering for inclusion in this paper but are not ready yet.
This paper currently provides a mechanism for detecting whether two executors share a common memory locality. However, it does not provide a way to invoke migration of data allocated local to one executor into the locality of another executor.
We envision that this mechanic could be facilitated by a customization point on two executors and perhaps a span
or mdspan
accessor.
This paper currently assumes a NUMA-like system, however there are many other kinds of systems with many different architectures with different kinds of processors, memory and connections between them.
In order to accurately take advantage of the range of systems available now and in the future we will need some way to parameterize or enumerate the different affinity domains which an executor can structure around.
Furthermore, in order to have control over those affinity domains we need a way in which to mask out the components of that domain that we wish to work with.
However, whichever option we opt for, it must be in such a way as to allow further additions as new system architectures become available.
Thanks to Christopher Di Bella, Toomas Remmelg, and Morris Hafner for their reviews and suggestions.
[1] P0687: Data Movement in C++
[2] The Design of OpenMP Thread Affinity
[3] Euro-Par 2011 Parallel Processing: 17th International, Affinity Matters
[4] Portable Hardware Locality
[5] SYCL 1.2.1
[6] OpenCL 2.2
[7] HSA
[8] OpenMP 5.0
[9] cpuaff
[10] Persistent Memory Programming
[11] MEMKIND
[12] Solaris pbind()
[13] Linux sched_setaffinity()
[14] Windows SetThreadAffinityMask()
[15] Chapel
[16] X10
[17] UPC++
[18] TBB
[19] HPX
[20] MADNESS
[21] Portable Hardware Locality Istopo
[22] A Unified Executors Proposal for C++
[23] P0737 : Execution Context of Execution Agents
[24] Exposing the Locality of new Memory Hierarchies to HPC Applications
[25] MPI
[26] Parallel Virtual Machine
[27] Building Fault-Tolerant Parallel Applications
[28] Post-failure recovery of MPI communication capability
[29] Fault Tolerance in MPI Programs
[30] p0323r4 std::expected
[31]: Intel® Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick
[32] MADNESS: A Multiresolution, Adaptive Numerical Environment for Scientific Simulation
[33] OpenMP topic: Affinity
[34] Balanced Affinity Type
[35] Supporting Heterogeneous & Distributed Computing Through Affinity
[36] System topology discovery for heterogeneous & distributed computing