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Chapter: An Introduction to Parallel Programming : Shared-Memory Programming with OpenMP

More About Loops in Openmp: Sorting

1. Bubble sort 2. Odd-even transposition sort

MORE ABOUT LOOPS IN OPENMP: SORTING

 

1. Bubble sort

 

Recollect that the serial bubble sort algorithm for sorting a list of integers can be implemented as follows:

for (list length = n; list length >= 2; list length --)

 for (i = 0; i < list length-1; i++)

if (a[i] > a[i+1]) {

tmp = a[i];

a[i] = a[i+1];

a[i+1] = tmp;

}

Here, a stores n ints and the algorithm sorts them in increasing order. The outer loop first finds the largest element in the list and stores it in a[n 1]; it then finds the next-to-the-largest element and stores it in a[n 2], and so on. So, effectively, the first pass is working with the full n-element list. The second is working with all of the elements, except the largest; it’s working with an n 1-element list, and so on.

The inner loop compares consecutive pairs of elements in the current list. When a pair is out of order (a[i] > a[i+1]) it swaps them. This process of swapping will move the largest element to the last slot in the “current” list, that is, the list consisting of the elements

 

a[0], a[1], . . . , a[list length-1]

It’s pretty clear that there’s a loop-carried dependence in the outer loop; in any iteration of the outer loop the contents of the current list depends on the previous iterations of the outer loop. For example, if at the start of the algorithm a = 3, 4, 1, 2, then the second iteration of the outer loop should work with the list 3, 1, 2, since the 4 should be moved to the last position by the first iteration. But if the first two iterations are executing simultaneously, it’s possible that the effective list for the second iteration will contain 4.

 

The loop-carried dependence in the inner loop is also fairly easy to see. In iter-ation i the elements that are compared depend on the outcome of iteration i- 1. If in iteration i -1, a[i -1] and a[i] are not swapped, then iteration i should compare a[i] and a[i+1]. If, on the other hand, iteration i -1 swaps a[i -1] and a[i], then iteration i should be comparing the original a[i -1] (which is now a[i]) and a[i+1]. For example, suppose the current list is {3,1,2}. Then when i = 1, we should com-pare 3 and 2, but if the i = 0 and the i = 1 iterations are happening simultaneously, it’s entirely possible that the i = 1 iteration will compare 1 and 2.

 

It’s also not at all clear how we might remove either loop-carried dependence without completely rewriting the algorithm. It’s important to keep in mind that even though we can always find loop-carried dependences, it may be difficult or impos-sible to remove them. The parallel for directive is not a universal solution to the problem of parallelizing for loops.

 

2. Odd-even transposition sort

 

Odd-even transposition sort is a sorting algorithm that’s similar to bubble sort, but that has considerably more opportunities for parallelism. Recall from Section 3.7.1 that serial odd-even transposition sort can be implemented as follows:

 

for (phase = 0; phase < n; phase++)

 if (phase % 2 == 0)

 

for (i = 1; i < n; i += 2)

 

if (a[i- 1] > a[i])

Swap(&a[i -1],&a[i]);

 

else

for (i = 1; i < n- 1; i += 2)

 

if (a[i] > a[i+1]) Swap(&a[i], &a[i+1]);

 

The list a stores n ints, and the algorithm sorts them into increasing order. During an “even phase” (phase % 2 == 0), each odd-subscripted element, a[i], is compared to the element to its “left,” a[i- 1], and if they’re out of order, they’re swapped. During an “odd” phase, each odd-subscripted element is compared to the element to its right, and if they’re out of order, they’re swapped. A theorem guarantees that after n phases, the list will be sorted.


As a brief example, suppose a = {9, 7, 8, 6}. Then the phases are shown in Table 5.1. In this case, the final phase wasn’t necessary, but the algorithm doesn’t bother checking whether the list is already sorted before carrying out each phase.

 

It’s not hard to see that the outer loop has a loop-carried dependence. As an exam-ple, suppose as before that a = {9, 7, 8, 6}. Then in phase 0 the inner loop will compare elements in the pairs (9, 7) and (8, 6), and both pairs are swapped. So for phase 1 the list should be {7, 9, 6, 8}, and during phase 1 the elements in the pair (9, 6) should be compared and swapped. However, if phase 0 and phase 1 are executed simultaneously, the pair that’s checked in phase 1 might be (7, 8), which is in order. Furthermore, it’s not clear how one might eliminate this loop-carried dependence, so it would appear that parallelizing the outer for loop isn’t an option.

 

The inner for loops, however, don’t appear to have any loop-carried depen-dences. For example, in an even phase loop, variable i will be odd, so for two distinct values of i, say i = j and i = k, the pairs {j -1, j} and {k -1, k} will be be disjoint. The comparison and possible swaps of the pairs (a[j -1], a[j]) and (a[k -1], a[k]) can therefore proceed simultaneously.

 

Thus, we could try to parallelize odd-even transposition sort using the code shown in Program 5.4, but there are a couple of potential problems. First, although any iteration of, say, one even phase doesn’t depend on any other iteration of that phase, we’ve already noted that this is not the case for iterations in phase p and phase p + 1. We need to be sure that all the threads have finished phase p before any thread starts phase p=+ 1. However, like the parallel directive, the parallel for directive has an implicit barrier at the end of the loop, so none of the threads will proceed to the next phase, phase p + 1, until all of the threads have completed the current phase, phase p.

 

A second potential problem is the overhead associated with forking and joining the threads. The OpenMP implementation may fork and join thread count threads on each pass through the body of the outer loop. The first row of Table 5.2 shows run-times for 1, 2, 3, and 4 threads on one of our systems when the input list contained 20,000 elements.

Program 5.4: First OpenMP implementation of odd-even sort

          for (phase = 0; phase < n; phase++) {

          if (phase % 2 == 0)

          #        pragma omp parallel for num threads(thread count) \

          default(none) shared(a, n) private(i, tmp)

          for (i = 1; i < n; i += 2) {

          if (a[i 1] > a[i]) {

          tmp = a[i-1];

          a[i 1] = a[i];

          a[i] = tmp;

          }

          }

          else

          #pragma omp parallel for num threads(thread count) \

          default(none) shared(a, n) private(i, tmp)

          for (i = 1; i < n 1; i += 2) {

          if (a[i] > a[i+1]) {

          tmp = a[i+1];

          a[i+1] = a[i];

          a[i] = tmp;

          }

          }

          }


These aren’t terrible times, but let’s see if we can do better. Each time we execute one of the inner loops, we use the same number of threads, so it would seem to be superior to fork the threads once and reuse the same team of threads for each execution of the inner loops. Not surprisingly, OpenMP provides directives that allow us to do just this. We can fork our team of thread count threads before the outer loop with a parallel directive. Then, rather than forking a new team of threads with each execution of one of the inner loops, we use a for directive, which tells OpenMP to parallelize the for loop with the existing team of threads. This modification to the original OpenMP implementation is shown in Program 5.5

The for directive, unlike the parallel for directive, doesn’t fork any threads. It uses whatever threads have already been forked in the enclosing parallel block.

Program 5.5: Second OpenMP implementation of odd-even sort

          #  pragma omp parallel num threads(thread count) \

          default(none) shared(a, n) private(i, tmp, phase)

          for (phase = 0; phase < n; phase++) {

          if (phase % 2 == 0)

          #        pragma omp for

          for (i = 1; i < n; i += 2) {

          if (a[i- 1] > a[i]) {

          tmp = a[i- 1];

          a[i 1] = a[i];

          a[i] = tmp;

          }

          }

          else

          #pragma omp for

          for (i = 1; i < n 1; i += 2) {

          if (a[i] > a[i+1]) {

          tmp = a[i+1];

          a[i+1] = a[i];

          a[i] = tmp;

          }

          }

          }

 

There is an implicit barrier at the end of the loop. The results of the code—the final list—will therefore be the same as the results obtained from the original parallelized code.

 

Run-times for this second version of odd-even sort are in the second row of Table 5.2. When we’re using two or more threads, the version that uses two for direc-tives is at least 17% faster than the version that uses two parallel for directives, so for this system the slight effort involved in making the change is well worth it.


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