UPMC, Master 2 Mathematics and Applications, Spring 2017
High performance compting, large scale linear algebra algorithms, numerical stability


Syllabus | Schedule of Lectures | Recommended reading |


Syllabus, Fridays 2 PM - 4PM

Instructor: L. Grigori
Location: Tour 15/25, salle 103, UPMC


The objective of this lecture is to provide the required background for designing efficient parallel numerical algorithms, as well as an introduction to the most recent algorithms in large-scale numerical linear algebra, an analysis of their numerical stability, and a study of their complexity in terms of computation and communication. The operations considered correspond to the most costly questions that lie at the heart of many complex numerical simulations.

The lecture will also discuss one of the major challenges in high performance computing which is the increased communication cost. The traditional metric for the cost of an algorithm is the number of arithmetic or logical operations it performs. But the most expensive operation an algorithm performs, measured in time or energy, is not arithmetic or logic, but communication, i.e. moving data between levels of a memory hierarchy or between processors over a network. The difference in costs can be orders of magnitude, and is growing over time due to technological trends like Moore's Law. So our goal is to design new algorithms that communicate much less than conventional algorithms, attaining lower bounds when possible.

This course will also present an overview of novel "communication-avoiding" (CA) algorithms that attain these goals, including communication lower bounds, and practical implementations showing large speedups. Problem domains considered include dense and sparse linear algebra and graph theory.

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Schedule of lectures

  • Jan 20
    Introduction to high performance computing and communication avoiding algorithms
  • Jan 27
    Introduction to distributed memory machines and MPI
    Recommended slides Lecture 7 of J. Demmel's class
  • Feb 3
    LU factorization and its backward stability, slides
  • Feb 10 no lecture
  • Feb 17 - lecture from 2PM to 6PM
    QR factorization and its backward stability, slides
    Communication avoiding LU and QR factorizations slides
  • Feb 24
    Rank revealing factorizations and low rank approximations, part 1 (dense case) slides
  • March 3
    MPI hands-on (1st part, TP1), this class will take place in Tour 15-25 salle 322
  • March 10
    Rank revealing factorizations and low rank approximations, part 2 (sparse case)
    (same slides from Feb 24)
  • March 17
    MPI hands-on (2nd part, TP2), this class will take place in Tour 15-25 salle 322
    TP2 has to be submitted by March 31, 2017
  • March 24
    Sparse linear solvers: iterative methods, slides
    After the lecture, from 4PM - 6PM, those interested to practice MPI can use the computers in salle 322, Tour 15-25.
  • April 21, 2PM-4PM, room 15/25-102
    Final exam (only paper documents are allowed during the exam)
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    Recommended reading (evolving)



    For communication avoiding algorithms:

    Lower bounds on communication
  • Michael Christ, James Demmel, Nicholas Knight, Thomas Scanlon, and Katherine Yelick
    Communication Lower Bounds and Optimal Algorithms for Programs That Reference Arrays — Part 1
    EECS Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2013-61, May 14, 2013.
  • Grey Ballard, James Demmel, Olga Holtz, Oded Schwartz,
    Minimizing Communication in Numerical Linear Algebra,
    SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, SIAM, Volume 32, Number 3, pp. 866-901, 2011, pdf .
  • Communication avoiding algorithms for dense linear algebra
  • J. Demmel, L. Grigori, M. F. Hoemmen, and J. Langou,
    Communication-optimal parallel and sequential QR and LU factorizations,
    SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, Vol. 34, No 1, 2012, pdf (also available on arXiv:0808.2664v1), short version of UCB-EECS-2008-89 and LAWN 204, available since 2008.
  • L. Grigori, J. Demmel, and H. Xiang,
    CALU: a communication optimal LU factorization algorithm,
    SIAM J. Matrix Anal. & Appl., 32, pp. 1317-1350, 2011, pdf preliminary version published as LAWN 226
  • G. Ballard, J. Demmel and I. Dumitriu,
    Communication-optimal parallel and sequential eigenvalue and singular value algorithms,
    UC Berkeley, Number EECS-2011-14, February 2011, pdf .
  • A. Khabou, J. Demmel, L. Grigori, and M. Gu
    LU factorization with panel rank revealing pivoting and its communication avoiding version, SIAM J. Matrix Anal. & Appl., Vol. 34, No. 3, pages 1401-1429, 2013, preliminary version published as LAWN 263, pdf.
  • J. Demmel, L. Grigori, M. Gu, and H. Xiang
    Communication avoiding rank revealing QR factorization with column pivoting, pdf,
    SIAM J. Matrix Anal. & Appl, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 55-89, 2015.
  • G. Ballard, J. Demmel, L. Grigori, M. Jacquelin, N. Knight, D. Nguyen
    Reconstructing Householder vectors for QR factorization ,
    Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Aug 2015, pdf.
  • Communication avoiding algorithms for iterative methods and preconditioners
  • Marghoob Mohiyuddin, Mark Hoemmen, James Demmel, and Kathy Yelick,
    Minimizing Communication in Sparse Matrix Solvers
    In Proc. of SC09, November, 2009.
  • Erin Carson, Nicholas Knight, and James Demmel,
    Avoiding Communication in Nonsymmetric Lanczos-Based Krylov Subspace Methods
    SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 35(5), pp. S42-S61.
  • L. Grigori, S. Moufawad, F. Nataf
    Enlarged Krylov Subspace Conjugate Gradient Methods for Reducing Communication , INRIA TR 8597 ,
    to appear in SIAM J. Matrix Anal. & Appl, 2016.
  • L. Grigori, S. Moufawad,
    Communication avoiding ILU0 preconditioner , pdf
    preliminary version published as INRIA TR 8266 .
    SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 2015, Vol. 37, Issue 2.
  • Communication avoiding for sparse matrices and graphs
  • TBA
  • Hardware aware algorithms
  • Andrew Gearhart,
    PhD thesis: Bounds on the Energy Consumption of Computational Kernels
    Computer Science Division, U.C. Berkeley, October 2014
  • E. Carson, J. Demmel, L. Grigori, N. Knight, P. Koanantakool, O. Schwartz and H. V. Simhadri,
    Write-Avoiding Algorithms,
    Proceedings of IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2016, shorter version of Technical Report UCB/EECS-2015-163 .
  • Randomized numerical linear algebra: overview, elementary proofs, low rank approximation algorithms, sketching algorithms
  • for a list of suggested reading, please check the Reading group on randomized linear algebra, Spring 2015

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    INRIA Paris
    Laboratoire J. L. Lions
    Universite Pierre et Marie Curie
    Contact: Laura Grigori (Laura(dot)Grigori(at)inria(dot)fr)

    © 2007 rs