Informatik
Refine
Year of publication
- 2019 (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Journal article (2) (remove)
Language
- English (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
Institute
- Informatik (2)
Publisher
- Springer (1)
- World Scientific (1)
Parallel applications are the computational backbone of major industry trends and grand challenges in science. Whereas these applications are typically constructed for dedicated High Performance Computing clusters and supercomputers, the cloud emerges as attractive execution environment, which provides on-demand resource provisioning and a pay-per-use model. However, cloud environments require specific application properties that may restrict parallel application design. As a result, design trade-offs are required to simultaneously maximize parallel performance and benefit from cloud-specific characteristics.
In this paper, we present a novel approach to assess the cloud readiness of parallel applications based on the design decisions made. By discovering and understanding the implications of these parallel design decisions on an application’s cloud readiness, our approach supports the migration of parallel applications to the cloud.We introduce an assessment procedure, its underlying meta model, and a corresponding instantiation to structure this multi-dimensional design space. For evaluation purposes, we present an extensive case study comprising three parallel applications and discuss their cloud readiness based on our approach.
With on-demand access to compute resources, pay-per-use, and elasticity, the cloud evolved into an attractive execution environment for High Performance Computing (HPC). Whereas elasticity, which is often referred to as the most beneficial cloud-specific property, has been heavily used in the context of interactive (multi-tier) applications, elasticity-related research in the HPC domain is still in its infancy. Existing parallel computing theory as well as traditional metrics to analytically evaluate parallel systems do not comprehensively consider elasticity, i.e., the ability to control the number of processing units at runtime. To address these issues, we introduce a conceptual framework to understand elasticity in the context of parallel systems, define the term elastic parallel system, and discuss novel metrics for both elasticity control at runtime as well as the ex post performance evaluation of elastic parallel systems. Based on the conceptual framework, we provide an in depth analysis of existing research in the field to describe the state-of-the art and compile our findings into a research agenda for future research on elastic parallel systems.