Parallel Hybrid Testing Techniques for the Dual-Programming Models-Based Programs

• Published in: Symmetry (Basel) 2020-09, Vol.12 (9), p.1555
• Main Authors: Alghamdi, Ahmed Mohammed, Eassa, Fathy Elbouraey, Khamakhem, Maher Ali, AL-Ghamdi, Abdullah Saad AL-Malaise, Alfakeeh, Ahmed S., Alshahrani, Abdullah S., Alarood, Ala A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: ACC_TEST; dual-programming model; Exascale systems; hybrid-testing tool; MPI + OpenACC
• ISSN: 2073-8994; 2073-8994
• DOI: 10.3390/sym12091555

The importance of high-performance computing is increasing, and Exascale systems will be feasible in a few years. These systems can be achieved by enhancing the hardware’s ability as well as the parallelism in the application by integrating more than one programming model. One of the dual-programming model combinations is Message Passing Interface (MPI) + OpenACC, which has several features including increased system parallelism, support for different platforms with more performance, better productivity, and less programming effort. Several testing tools target parallel applications built by using programming models, but more effort is needed, especially for high-level Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-related programming models. Owing to the integration of different programming models, errors will be more frequent and unpredictable. Testing techniques are required to detect these errors, especially runtime errors resulting from the integration of MPI and OpenACC; studying their behavior is also important, especially some OpenACC runtime errors that cannot be detected by any compiler. In this paper, we enhance the capabilities of ACC_TEST to test the programs built by using the dual-programming models MPI + OpenACC and detect their related errors. Our tool integrated both static and dynamic testing techniques to create ACC_TEST and allowed us to benefit from the advantages of both techniques reducing overheads, enhancing system execution time, and covering a wide range of errors. Finally, ACC_TEST is a parallel testing tool that creates testing threads based on the number of application threads for detecting runtime errors.