Audit: A new synchronization API for the GET/PUT protocol

The GET/PUT protocol is considered an effective communication API for parallel computing. However, the one-sided nature of the GET/PUT protocol lacks synchronization functionality for the target process. To date, several techniques have been proposed to tackle this problem. The APIs suggested thus far have failed to hide implementation details of the synchronization functionality. In this paper, a new synchronization API for the GET/PUT protocol is proposed. The central idea here is to associate synchronization flags with the GET/PUT memory regions. Using this technique, synchronization flags are hidden from users, and they are freed from managing the associations between the memory regions and the synchronization flags. The proposed API, named Audit, does not incur additional programming and thus enables natural parallel programming. The evaluations show that Audit exhibits better performance compared to the Notify API proposed in ARMCI.

► Proposed GET/PUT protocol API simplifies the GET/PUT programming.
► The idea is to associate synchronization flags with the GET/PUT memory regions.
► A sort tree is used to find the synchronization flag from the accessing address.
► Its overhead is negligible and it outperforms ARMCI Notify.
► Thus, an efficient and easy parallel programming may be achieved.