Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

On The Hardness Of Counting And Sampling Center Strings, Christina Boucher, Mohamed Omar

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Given a set S of n strings, each of length ℓ, and a nonnegative value d, we define a center string as a string of length ` that has Hamming distance at most d from each string in S. The #CLOSEST STRING problem aims to determine the number of center strings for a given set of strings S and input parameters n, ℓ, and d. We show #CLOSEST STRING is impossible to solve exactly or even approximately in polynomial time, and that restricting #CLOSEST STRING so that any one of the parameters n, ℓ, or d is fixed leads to …

Sorting In Parallel, Ran Libeskind-Hadas

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

In 1842, L.F. Menabrea anticipated the benefits of parallel computing in an article that appeared in the Swiss Journal Bibliotheque universelle de Geneve:

When a long series of identical computations is to be performed, such as those required for the formation of numerical tables, the machine can be brought into play so as to give several results at the same time, which will greatly abridge the whole amount of the processes.

Although more than a century passed before Menabrea's vision became a reality, today parallel computers with hundreds and even thousands of processors are used in a broad range …

Tree-Based Multicasting In Wormhole-Routed Irregular Topologies, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Dominic Mazzoni '99, Ranjith Rajagopalan '99

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

A deadlock-free tree-based multicast routing algorithm is presented for all direct networks, regardless of interconnection topology. The algorithm delivers a message to any number of destinations using only a single startup phase. In contrast to existing tree-based schemes, this algorithm applies to all interconnection topologies, requires only fixed-sized input buffers that are independent of maximum message length, and uses a single asynchronous flit replication mechanism. The theoretical basis of the technique used here is sufficiently general to develop other tree-based multicasting algorithms for regular and irregular topologies. Simulation results demonstrate that this tree-based algorithm provides a very promising means of …

Optimal Contention-Free Unicast-Based Multicasting In Switch-Based Networks Of Workstations, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Dominic Mazzoni '99, Ranjith Rajagopalan '99

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

A unicast-based multicasting algorithm is presented for arbitrary interconnection networks arising in switch-based networks of workstations. The algorithm is optimal with respect tot he number of startups incurred and is provably free from depth contention. Specifically, no two constituent unicasts for the same multicast contend for a common channel, even if some unicasts are delayed due to unpredictable variations in latencies. The algorithm uses an underlying partially adaptive deadlock-free unicast routing algorithm. Simulation results indicate that the algorithm behaves as predicted by its theoretical properties and provides a promising approach to unicast-based multicasting.

Adaptive Multicast Routing In Wormhole Networks, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Tom Hehre '96, Andrew Hutchings '98, Mark Reyes '98, Kevin Watkins '97

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Multicast communication has applications in a number of fundamental operations in parallel computing. An effective multicast routing algorithm must be free from both livelock and deadlock while minimizing communication latency. We describe two classes of multicast wormhole routing algorithms that employ the multi-destination wormhole hardware mechanism proposed by Lin et al. [12] and Panda et al. [17]. Specific examples of these classes of algorithms are described and experimental results suggests that such algorithms enjoy low communication latencies across a range of network loads.

Approximation Algorithms: Good Solutions To Hard Problems, Ran Libeskind-Hadas

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Consider a computer network represented by an undirected graph where the vertices represent computer nodes and the edges represent links between the nodes. Since some of the links in the network may become faulty, link testing devices are placed at some of the nodes. A tester at a particular node can test all links incident to that node. Since the testers are expensive, however, we wish to deploy the minimum number of these devices such that every link is incidient to at least one node containing a tester. In graph theoretic terms, a vertex cover is a subset of the …

On The Decomposition Of Asynchronous Systems, Robert M. Keller

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

This paper reports of part of a continuing investigation of parallel computation, in particular, efforts toward understanding the nature of different types of parallel control. The first section defines an asynchronous system to be a simple type of state machine. This was arrived at in an attempt to generalize from the types of control in parallel program schemata and networks of asynchronous modules without bounded delays. Asynchronous systems with output are also defined in a familiar way. The deviation from standard work comes in the definition of a parallel decomposition of asynchronous systems. Some preliminary work on compositions of this …