University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

From detection to optimization: impact of soft errors on high-performance computing applications

Calhoun, Jon Cameron

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/98379

Description

Title
From detection to optimization: impact of soft errors on high-performance computing applications
Author(s)
Calhoun, Jon Cameron
Issue Date
2017-07-12
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Snir, Marc
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Olson, Luke N.
Committee Member(s)
  • Gropp, William
  • Cappello, Franck
Department of Study
Computer Science
Discipline
Computer Science
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • High-performance computing
  • Fault tolerance
  • Silent data corruption
  • Soft errors
  • Error detection
  • Error recovery
  • Fault injection
  • Error propagation
  • Lossy compression
  • Checkpoint-restart
Abstract
As high-performance computing (HPC) continues to progress, constraints on HPC system design forces the handling of errors to higher levels in the software stack. Of the types of errors facing HPC, soft errors that silently corrupt system or application state are among the most severe. The behavior of HPC applications in the presence of soft errors is critical to gain insight for effective utilization of HPC systems. The need to understand this behavior can be used in developing algorithm-based error detection guided by application characteristics from fault injection and error propagation studies. Furthermore, the realization that applications are tolerant to small errors allows optimizations such as lossy compression on high-cost data transfers. Lossy compression adds small user controllable amounts of error when compressing data, to reduce data size before expensive data transfers saving time. This dissertation investigates and improves the resiliency of HPC applications to soft errors, and explores lossy compression as a new form of optimization for expensive, time-consuming data transfers.
Graduation Semester
2017-08
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/98379
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2017 Jon Cameron Calhoun

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