Stencil algorithms have been receiving considerable interest in HPC research for decades. The techniques used to approach multi-core stencil performance modeling and engineering span basic runtime measurements, elaborate performance models, detailed hardware counter analysis, and thorough scaling behavior evaluation. Due to the plurality of approaches and stencil patterns, we set out to develop a generalizable methodology for reproducible measurements accompanied by state-of-the-art performance models. Our open-source toolchain, and collected results are publicly available in the "Intranode Stencil Performance Evaluation Collection" (INSPECT). We present the underlying methodologies, models and tools involved in gathering and documenting the performance behavior of a collection of typical stencil patterns across multiple architectures and hardware configuration options. Our aim is to endow performance-aware application developers with reproducible baseline performance data and validated models to initiate a well-defined process of performance assessment and optimization.
published a study of a stencil kernel on multiple architectures in 2009 @cite_27 . It is based on the same modeling principles but does not provide a unified process and presentation reusable for other kernels.
@cite_27
1997147891
Stencil-based kernels constitute the core of many important scientific applications on block-structured grids. Unfortunately, these codes achieve a low fraction of peak performance, due primarily to the disparity between processor and main memory speeds. In this paper, we explore the impact of trends in memory subsystems on a variety of stencil optimization techniques and develop performance models to analytically guide our optimizations. Our work targets cache reuse methodologies across single and multiple stencil sweeps, examining cache-aware algorithms as well as cache-oblivious techniques on the Intel Itanium2, AMD Opteron, and IBM Power5. Additionally, we consider stencil computations on the heterogeneous multicore design of the Cell processor, a machine with an explicitly managed memory hierarchy. Overall our work represents one of the most extensive analyses of stencil optimizations and performance modeling to date. Results demonstrate that recent trends in memory system organization have reduced the efficacy of traditional cache-blocking optimizations. We also show that a cache-aware implementation is significantly faster than a cache-oblivious approach, while the explicitly managed memory on Cell enables the highest overall efficiency: Cell attains 88 of algorithmic peak while the best competing cache-based processor achieves only 54 of algorithmic peak performance.