Towards an auto-tuned and task-based spmv (lass library)

We present a novel approach to parallelize the SpMV kernel included in LASs (Linear Algebra routines on OmpSs) library, after a deep review and analysis of several well-known approaches. LASs is based on OmpSs, a task-based runtime that extends OpenMP directives, providing more flexibility to apply new strategies. Based on tasking and nesting, with the aim of improving the workload imbalance inherent to the SpMV operation, we present a strategy especially useful for highly imbalanced input matrices. In this approach, the number of created tasks is dynamically decided in order to maximize the use of the resources of the platform. Throughout this paper, SpMV behavior depending on the selected strategy (state of the art and proposed strategies) is deeply analyzed, setting in this way the base for a future auto-tunable code that is able to select the most suitable approach depending on the input matrix. The experiments of this work were carried out for a set of 12 matrices from the Suite Sparse Matrix Collection, all of them with different characteristics regarding their sparsity. The experiments of this work were performed on a node of Marenostrum 4 supercomputer (with two sockets Intel Xeon, 24 cores each) and on a node of Dibona cluster (using one ARM ThunderX2 socket with 32 cores). Our tests show that, for Intel Xeon, the best parallelization strategy reduces the execution time of the reference MKL multi-threaded version up to 67%. On ARM ThunderX2, the reduction is up to 56% with respect to the OmpSs parallel reference.