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Benchmarking Pthreads Performance
Bronis R. de Supinski
Center for Applied Scientific Computing
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA 94551
bronis@llnl.gov
Abstract: The importance of the performance
of threads libraries is growing as clusters of shared
memory machines become more popular POSIX
threads, or Pthreads, is an industry threads library
standard. We have implemented the first Pthreads
benchmark suite. In addition to measuring basic thread
functions, such as thread creation, we apply the LogP
model to standard Pthreads communication mecha-
nisms. We present the results of our tests for several
hardware platforms. These results demonstrate that the
performance of existing Pthreads implementations var-
ies widely; parts of nearly all of these implementations
could be further optimized.
1. Introduction
With the growing popularity of
symmetric multiprocessors (SMPs), the
importance of the performance of Pthreads
libraries is increasing. However, no Pthreads
benchmark suite currently exists. We are
developing a benchmark suite that will fill this
void. This tool will be useful in predicting and
identifying performance problems of codes
that use Pthreads.
We are modifying a publicly available
MPI benchmark suite in order to measure
Pthreads performance. This approach will
allow us to eventually provide a benchmark
suite for measuring the performance of mixed
programming models for clusters of SMPs
that use both threads and message passing.
Our initial results from several SMP systems
demonstrate significant performance differ-
ences between existing Pthreads implementa-John May
Center for Applied Scientific Computing
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA 94551
johnmay@llnl.gov
tions. Since hardware differences do not fully
explain these performance variations, optimi-
zations could improve the implementations.
2. Incorporating Threads Bench-
marks into SKaMPI
SKaMPI is an MPI benchmark suite
that provides a general framework for perfor-
mance analysis [7]. SKaMPI does not exhaus-
tively test the MPI standard. Instead, it
provides a simple interface to incorporate
additional measurements. This interface
provides extensive facilities for data
collection and test management, such as
dynamic selection of independent variable
values and of the number of trials to obtain an
accurate measurement at any single data
point. Thus, SKaMPI is an excellent starting
point for implementing our Pthreads
benchmark suite.
Nonetheless, several aspects of
SKaMPI are inappropriate for a Pthreads
benchmark suite. Since clock granularity
varies widely across systems, most bench-
marks time repeated measurement actions,
such as locking a mutex, and use the average
time per iteration to estimate the time that the
action takes. SKaMPI does not; instead it
assumes that the duration of an action is suffi-
ciently long to be measured individually.
Since this assumption is clearly inappropriate
for several important Pthreads actions, weThis work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory under contract no. W-7405-Eng-48.
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May, J M & de Supinski, B R. Benchmarking Pthreads performance, article, April 27, 1999; California. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc619313/m1/3/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.