Shodor

a national resource for computational science education

HOME BWPEP Shodor Blue Waters

View Position
Project TitleReproducible Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines (ReproBLAS)
SummaryGetting the same answer when you run a program more than once is important for debugging and correctness, but is no longer guaranteed on parallel computers that may compute sums of floating point numbers in different orders from run to run, because round-off errors make addition nonassociative. The BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines) are a standard library of common operations like matrix-multiply, and the BLAS Standard Committee is considering a version of the BLAS that guarantees bit-wise reproducibility from run-to-run. This position would involve implementing, measuring and improving the performance, and applying a proposed implementation of this new standard.
Job DescriptionThe intern would be responsible for first learning about the existing algorithm and prototype implementation of reproducible summation and (some of) the ReproBLAS, and the new draft BLAS standard. Second, the intern would reimplement the existing ReproBLAS to match the standard, add missing routines, and evaluate and tune performance on target architectures. Third, the intern would modify selected LAPACK and ScaLAPACK library routines to use the ReproBLAS, and evaluate their reproducibility and performance.
Use of Blue WatersBlue Waters will be one of the target architectures for evaluating performance and reproducibility of the software described above. Other architectures include those available in our research lab and at NERSC.
Start Date05/15/2017
End Date05/15/2018
LocationSoda Hall, Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley
Interns
Wen Rui Liau