How can I determine if this write access is coalesced? - coalesce

How can I determine if the following memory access is coalesced or not:
// Thread-ID
int idx = blockIdx.x * blockDim.x + threadIdx.x;
// Offset:
int offset = gridDim.x * blockDim.x;
while ( idx < NUMELEMENTS )
{
// Do Something
// ....
// Write to Array which contains results of calculations
results[ idx ] = df2;
// Next Element
idx += offset;
}
NUMELEMENTS is the complete number of single dataelements to process. The array results is passed as pointer to the kernel function and allocated before in global memory.
My Question: Is the write access in the line results[ idx ] = df2; coalesced?
I believe it is as each thread processes consecutive indexed items but I'm not completely sure about it & I don't know how to tell.
Thanks!

Depends if the length of the lines of your matrix is a multiple of half the warp size for devices of compute capability 1.x or a multiple of the warp size for devices of compute capability 2.x. If it is not you can use padding to make it fully coalesced. The function cudaMallocPitch can be used for this purpose.
edit:
Sorry for the confusion. You write 'offset' elements at a time which I interpreted as lines of a matrix.
What I mean is, after each iteration of your cycle you increase the idx by offset. If offset is a multiple of half the warp size for devices of compute capability 1.x or a multiple of the warp size for devices of compute capability 2.x then you it is coalesced, if not then you need padding to make it so.
Probably it is already coalesced because you should choose the number of threads per block and thus the blockDim as a multiple of the warp size.

Related

Having thread-local arrays in cython so that I can resize them?

I have an interval-treeish algorithm I would like to run in parallel for many queries using threads. Problem is that then each thread would need its own array, since I cannot know in advance how many hits there will be.
There are other questions like this, and the solution suggested is always to have an array of size (K, t) where K is output length and t is number of threads. This does not work for me as K might be different for each thread and each thread might need to resize the array to fit all the results it gets.
Pseudocode:
for i in prange(len(starts)):
qs, qe, qx = starts[i], ends[i], index[i]
results = t.search(qs, qe)
if len(results) + nfound < len(output):
# add result to output
else:
# resize array
# then add results
An usual pattern is that every thread gets its own container, which is a trade-off between speed/complexity and memory-overhead:
there is no need to lock for access to this container, because only one thread accesses it.
there is much less overhead compared to "own container for every task (i.e. every i-value)".
After the parallel section, the data must be either collected in a final container in a post processing step (which also could happen in parallel) or the subsequent algorithms should be able to handle a collection of containers.
Here is an example using c++-vector (which already has memory management and increasing size built-in):
%%cython -+ -c=/openmp --link-args=/openmp
from cython.parallel import prange, threadid
from libcpp.vector cimport vector
cimport openmp
def calc_in_parallel(N):
cdef int i,k,tid
cdef int n = N
cdef vector[vector[int]] vecs
# every thread gets its own container
vecs.resize(openmp.omp_get_max_threads())
for i in prange(n, nogil=True):
tid = threadid()
for k in range(i):
# use container of the thread
vecs[tid].push_back(k) # dummy for calculation
return vecs
Using omp_get_max_threads() for the number of threads will overestimate the real number of threads in many cases. It is probably more robust to set the number of threads explicitly in prange, i.e.
...
NUM_THREADS = 2
vecs.resize(NUM_THREADS)
for i in prange(n, nogil=True, num_threads = NUM_THREADS):
...
A similar approach can be applied using pure C, but more boiler plate code (memory management) will be needed in this case.

saving and loading large numpy matrix

The below code is how I save the numpy array and it is about 27GB after saved. There are more than 200K images data and each shape is (224,224,3)
hf = h5py.File('cropped data/features_train.h5', 'w')
for i,each in enumerate(features_train):
hf.create_dataset(str(i), data=each)
hf.close()
This is the method I used to load the data, and it takes hours for loading.
features_train = np.zeros(shape=(1,224,224,3))
hf = h5py.File('cropped data/features_train.h5', 'r')
for key in hf.keys():
x = hf.get(key)
x = np.array(x)
features_train = np.append(features_train,np.array([x]),axis=0)
hf.close()
So, does anyone has a better solution for this large size of data?
You didn't tell us how much physical RAM your server has,
but 27 GiB sounds like "a lot".
Consider breaking your run into several smaller batches.
There is an old saw in java land that asks "why does this have quadratic runtime?",
that is, "why is this so slow?"
String s = ""
for (int i = 0; i < 1e6, i++) {
s += "x";
}
The answer is that toward the end,
on each iteration we are reading ~ a million characters
then writing them, then appending a single character.
The cost is O(1e12).
Standard solution is to use a StringBuilder so we're back
to the expected O(1e6).
Here, I worry that calling np.append() pushes us into the quadratic regime.
To verify, replace the features_train assignment with a simple evaluation
of np.array([x]), so we spend a moment computing and then immediately discarding
that value on each iteration.
If the conjecture is right, runtime will be much smaller.
To remedy it, avoid calling .append().
Rather, preallocate 27 GiB with np.zeros()
(or np.empty())
and then within the loop assign each freshly read array
into the offset of its preallocated slot.
Linear runtime will allow the task to complete much more quickly.

What does flatten_parameters() do?

I saw many Pytorch examples using flatten_parameters in the forward function of the RNN
self.rnn.flatten_parameters()
I saw this RNNBase and it is written that it
Resets parameter data pointer so that they can use faster code paths
What does that mean?
It may not be a full answer to your question. But, if you give a look at the flatten_parameters's source code , you will notice that it calls _cudnn_rnn_flatten_weight in
...
NoGradGuard no_grad;
torch::_cudnn_rnn_flatten_weight(...)
...
is the function that does the job. You will find that what it actually does is copying the model's weights into a vector<Tensor> (check the params_arr declaration) in:
// Slice off views into weight_buf
std::vector<Tensor> params_arr;
size_t params_stride0;
std::tie(params_arr, params_stride0) = get_parameters(handle, rnn, rnn_desc, x_desc, w_desc, weight_buf);
MatrixRef<Tensor> weight{weight_arr, static_cast<size_t>(weight_stride0)},
params{params_arr, params_stride0};
And the weights copying in
// Copy weights
_copyParams(weight, params);
Also note that they update (or Reset as they explicitly say in docs) the original pointers of weights with the new pointers of params by doing an in-place operation .set_ (_ is their notation for the in-place operations) in orig_param.set_(new_param.view_as(orig_param));
// Update the storage
for (size_t i = 0; i < weight.size(0); i++) {
for (auto orig_param_it = weight[i].begin(), new_param_it = params[i].begin();
orig_param_it != weight[i].end() && new_param_it != params[i].end();
orig_param_it++, new_param_it++) {
auto orig_param = *orig_param_it, new_param = *new_param_it;
orig_param.set_(new_param.view_as(orig_param));
}
}
And according to n2798 (draft of C++0x)
©ISO/IECN3092
23.3.6 Class template vector
A vector is a sequence container that supports random access iterators. In addition, it supports (amortized)constant time insert and erase operations at the end; insert and erase in the middle take linear time. Storage management is handled automatically, though hints can be given to improve efficiency. The elements of a vector are stored contiguously, meaning that if v is a vector <T, Allocator> where T is some type other than bool, then it obeys the identity&v[n] == &v[0] + n for all 0 <= n < v.size().
In some situations
UserWarning: RNN module weights are not part of single contiguous chunk of memory. This means they need to be compacted at every call, possibly greately increasing memory usage. To compact weights again call flatten_parameters().
They explicitly advise people in code warnings to have a contiguous chunk of memory.

Stacking and dynamic programing

Basically I'm trying to solve this problem :
Given N unit cube blocks, find the smaller number of piles to make in order to use all the blocks. A pile is either a cube or a pyramid. For example two valid piles are the cube 4 *4 *4=64 using 64 blocks, and the pyramid 1²+2²+3²+4²=30 using 30 blocks.
However, I can't find the right angle to approach it. I feel like it's similar to the knapsack problem, but yet, couldn't find an implementation.
Any help would be much appreciated !
First I will give a recurrence relation which will permit to solve the problem recursively. Given N, let
SQUARE-NUMS
TRIANGLE-NUMS
be the subset of square numbers and triangle numbers in {1,...,N} respectively. Let PERMITTED_SIZES be the union of these. Note that, as 1 occurs in PERMITTED_SIZES, any instance is feasible and yields a nonnegative optimum.
The follwing function in pseudocode will solve the problem in the question recursively.
int MinimumNumberOfPiles(int N)
{
int Result = 1 + min { MinimumNumberOfPiles(N-i) }
where i in PERMITTED_SIZES and i smaller than N;
return Result;
}
The idea is to choose a permitted bin size for the items, remove these items (which makes the problem instance smaller) and solve recursively for the smaller instances. To use dynamic programming in order to circumvent multiple evaluation of the same subproblem, one would use a one-dimensional state space, namely an array A[N] where A[i] is the minimum number of piles needed for i unit blocks. Using this state space, the problem can be solved iteratively as follows.
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
if i is 0 set A[i] to 0,
if i occurs in PERMITTED_SIZES, set A[i] to 1,
set A[i] to positive infinity otherwise;
}
This initializes the states which are known beforehand and correspond to the base cases in the above recursion. Next, the missing states are filled using the following loop.
for (int i = 0; i <= N; i++)
{
if (A[i] is positive infinity)
{
A[i] = 1 + min { A[i-j] : j is in PERMITTED_SIZES and j is smaller than i }
}
}
The desired optimal value will be found in A[N]. Note that this algorithm only calculates the minimum number of piles, but not the piles themselves; if a suitable partition is needed, it has to be found either by backtracking or by maintaining additional auxiliary data structures.
In total, provided that PERMITTED_SIZES is known, the problem can be solved in O(N^2) steps, as PERMITTED_SIZES contains at most N values.
The problem can be seen as an adaptation of the Rod Cutting Problem where each square or triangle size has value 0 and every other size has value 1, and the objective is to minimize the total value.
In total, an additional computation cost is necessary to generate PERMITTED_SIZES from the input.
More precisely, the corresponding choice of piles, once A is filled, can be generated using backtracking as follows.
int i = N; // i is the total amount still to be distributed
while ( i > 0 )
{
choose j such that
j is in PERMITTED_SIZES and j is smaller than i
and
A[i] = 1 + A[i-j] is minimized
Output "Take a set of size" + j; // or just output j, which is the set size
// the part above can be commented as "let's find out how
// the value in A[i] was generated"
set i = i-j; // decrease amount to distribute
}

how can I use multithreading to compute the intersection on a very large dataset

I have a file composed of 4 millions sets. every set contains 1 to n words. The size of the file is 120 MB.
set1 = {w11, w12,...,w1i}
set2 = {w21, w22,...,w2j}
...
setm = {wm1, wm2,...,wmk}
I want to compute the intersection between all the sets.
Set 1 ∩ {set1,...,setm}
Set 2 ∩ {set1,...,setm}
...
Set m ∩ {set1,...,setm}
Every operation takes Around 1.2 seconds. What I did the following:
divide the 4 million sets into 6 chunks. Every chunk containing 666666 sets
Then I do the following. In here i'll be creating 36 threads and i'll be computing the intersection between the chuncks. It is too slow and I complicated the problem.
vector<thread> threads;
for(int i = 0; i< chunk.size();i++)
{
for(int j = 0; j < chunk.size();j++)
{
threads.push_back(thread(&Transform::call_intersection, this, ref(chunk[i]),ref(tmp[j]), chunk(results)));
}
}
for(auto &t : threads){ t.join(); }
Do you have an idea on how to divide the problem into sub-problems and then join all of them together in the end. any good way in linux too?
Sample
The first column represents the ID of the set and the rest of the columns represents the words.
m.06fl3b|hadji|barbarella catton|haji catton|haji cat|haji
m.06flgy|estadio neza 86
m.06fm8g|emd gp39dc
m.0md41|pavees|barbarella catton
m.06fmg|round
m.01012g|hadji|fannin county windom town|windom
m.0101b|affray
Example
m.06fl3b has an intersection with m.01012g and m.0md41. The output file will be as follows:
m.06fl3b m.01012g m.0md41
m.06flgy
m.06fm8g
m.0md41 m.06fl3b
m.06fmg
m.01012g m.06fl3b
m.0101b
Set intersection is associative and therefore amenable to parallel folding (which is one of many use cases of MapReduce). For each pair of sets ((1, 2), (3, 4), ...), you can compute the intersection of each pair, and put the results into a new collection of sets, which will have half the size. Repeat until you're left with only one set. The total number of intersection operations will be equal to the number of sets minus one.
Launching millions of threads is going to bog down your machine, however, so you will probably want to use a thread pool: Make a number of threads that is close to the amount of CPU cores you have available, and create a list of tasks, where each task is two sets that are to be intersected. Each thread repeatedly checks the task list and grabs the first available task (make sure that you access the task list in a thread-safe manner).

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