Toward Better Simulation of MPI Applications on Ethernet/TCP Networks

Simulation and modeling for performance prediction and profiling is essential for developing and maintaining HPC code that is expected to scale for next-generation exascale systems, and correctly modeling network behavior is essential for creating realistic simulations. In this article we describe an implementation of a flow-based hybrid network model that accounts for factors such as network topology and contention, which are commonly ignored by other approaches. We focus on large-scale, Ethernet-connected systems, as these currently compose 37.8 % of the TOP500 index, and this share is expected to increase as higher-speed 10 and 100GbE become more available. The European Mont-Blanc project, which studies exascale computing by developing prototype systems with low-power embedded devices, uses Ethernet-based interconnect. Our model is implemented within SMPI, an open-source MPI implementation that connects real applications to the SimGrid simulation framework. SMPI provides implementations of collective communications based on current versions of both OpenMPI and MPICH. SMPI and SimGrid also provide methods for easing the simulation of large-scale systems, including shadow execution, memory folding, and support for both online and offline (i.e., post-mortem) simulation. We validate our proposed model by comparing traces produced by SMPI with those from real world experiments, as well as with those obtained using other established network models. Our study shows that SMPI has a consistently better predictive power than classical LogP-based models for a wide range of scenarios including both established HPC benchmarks and real applications.