HDagg: Hybrid Aggregation of Loop-carried Dependence Iterations in Sparse Matrix Computations

This paper proposes a novel aggregation algorithm, called Hybrid DAG Aggregation (HDagg), that groups iterations of sparse matrix computations with loop carried dependence to improve their parallel execution on multicore processors. Prior approaches to optimize sparse matrix computations fail to provide an efficient balance between locality, load balance, and synchronization and are primarily optimized for codes with a tree-structure data dependence. HDagg is optimized for sparse matrix computations that their data dependence graphs (DAGs) do not have a tree structure, such as incomplete matrix factorization algorithms. It uses a hybrid approach to aggregate vertices and wavefronts in the DAG of a sparse computation to create well-balanced parallel workloads with good locality. Across three sparse kernels, triangular solver, incomplete Cholesky, and incomplete LU, HDagg outperforms existing sparse libraries such as MKL with an average speedup of 3.56x and is faster than state-of-the-art inspector-executor approaches that optimize sparse computations, i.e. DAGP, LBC, wavefront parallelism techniques, and SpMP by an average speedup of 3.87x, 3.41x, 1.95x, and 1.43x respectively.