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Week 5

Fortunately for Philip and I, everything seemed to go right this week:
  • I finished the test suite for the synthetic sqrt code
    • The test suite allows analysis of performance and accuracy.
    • I will use it to explore several aspects of my problem:
      • Which algorithm is better? (Newton Raphson iterations, or a Binary Search)
      • How do the values of the absolute and relative tolerances affect the balance between performance and accuracy?
      • (Also, is there an optimal setting for these values that maximizes both?)
      • How must I adapt these settings according to the precision used? (Single vs Double)
      • Are any of these aspects affected by the particular value of the operand? (different sqrt(x) for different x?)
      • How would this added functionality slow down applications as a function of usage (0.1%, 1%, or 10% of calculations?)
  • I also discovered that our methodology for measuring execution time was flawed.
    • The prior method kept track of the number of active clock cycles between two system calls, but these did not include time spent outside the CPU.
    • I've corrected the problem by making system calls to get wall time stamps and did a subtraction to determine execution time.
    • I will be adding to the group wiki to share this insight with the rest of the group.
  • Philip, after learning of my root-finding approach to implementing sqrt, was interested in applying this approach for division.
    • We discussed both the theory of applying this to division and the practical implications of implementing this on GPUs.
    • We agreed this approach had the potential to perform much faster and much more accurately than his current approach.
    • Indeed, his preliminary results show massive speed improvements that greatly exceeded our expectations.
    • In fact, these results show that for operands particularly large in magnitude, the new approach not only fixes GPU drifting, but is more accurate than CPU hardware division!
  • During the week, I was involved in several discussions:
    • Philip and I presented our work and preliminary findings to a group of collaborators from the Army Research Laboratory.
      • They do a lot of work on GPUs, and are very interested in our project.
    • I attended a talk by Dr. Lisa Marvel, a researcher also from the ARL.
      • Her work in Steganography is incredibly interesting!
    • I've also participated in the weekly group meeting.
      • Trilce, a Ph.D. student in the group, presented a paper that was awarded "Best Systems Paper" in Supercomputing 2003.
      • The paper detailed very useful methodologies for finding sources of performance loss in high scale clusters and eliminating them.
  • Some social events.
    • I went to another picnic hosted by the social committee at the Towers, where I currently stay.
    • The food was great, and I got to ride a segway!
    • I had lunch with Dr. Pollock's group and the rest of the GCL.