Pipelined functional tree accesses and updates: scheduling, synchronization, caching and coherence

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of the parallel graph reduction approach to parallel functional programming, illustrated by a particular example: pipelined, dynamically-scheduled implementation of search, updates and read-modify-write transactions on an in-store binary search tree. We use program transformation, execution-driven simulation and analytical modelling to expose the maximum potential parallelism, the minimum communication and synchronisation overheads, and to control the overall space requirement. We begin with a lazy functional program specifying a series of transactions on a binary tree, each involving several searches and updates, in a side-effect-free fashion. Transformation of the source code produces a formulation of the program with greater locality and larger grain size than can be achieved using naive parallelization methods, and we show that, with care, these tasks can be scheduled effectively. Even with a workload using random keys, significant spatial locality is found, and we evaluate a modified cache coherency protocol which avoids false sharing so that large cache lines can be used to minimise the number of messages required. As expected with a pipeline, the application should reach a steady state as soon as the first transaction is completed. However, if the network latency is too large, the rate of completion lags behind the rate at which work is admitted, and internal queues grow without bound. We determine the conditions under which this occurs, and show how it can be avoided while maximising speedup.