High-performance computing (HPC) systems that run scientific simulations of significance produce a large amount of data during runtime. Transferring or storing such big datasets causes a severe I/O bottleneck and a considerable storage burden. Applying compression techniques, particularly lossy compressors, can reduce the size of the data and mitigate such overheads. Unlike lossless compression algorithms, error-controlled lossy compressors could significantly reduce the data size while respecting the user-defined error bound. DCTZ is one of the transform-based lossy compressors with a highly efficient encoding and purpose-built error control mechanism that accomplishes high compression ratios with high data fidelity. However, since DCTZ quantizes the DCT coefficients in the frequency domain, it may only partially control the relative error bound defined by the user. In this paper, we aim to improve the compression quality of DCTZ. Specifically, we propose a preconditioning method based on level offsetting and scaling to control the magnitude of input of the DCTZ framework, thereby enforcing stricter error bounds. We evaluate the performance of our method in terms of compression ratio and rate distortion with real-world HPC datasets. Our experimental result shows that our method can achieve a higher compression ratio than other state-of-the-art lossy compressors with a tighter error bound while precisely guaranteeing the user-defined error bound.
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Efficient Encoding and Reconstruction of HPC Datasets for Checkpoint/Restart
As the amount of data produced by HPC applications reaches the exabyte range, compression techniques are often adopted to reduce the checkpoint time and volume. Since lossless techniques are limited in their ability to achieve appreciable data reduction, lossy compression becomes a preferable option. In this work, a lossy compression technique with highly efficient encoding, purpose-built error control, and high compression ratios is proposed. Specifically, we apply a discrete cosine transform with a novel block decomposition strategy directly to double-precision floating point datasets instead of prevailing prediction-based techniques. Further, we design an adaptive quantization with two specific task-oriented quantizers: guaranteed error bounds and higher compression ratios. Using real-world HPC datasets, our approach achieves 3x-38x compression ratios while guaranteeing specified error bounds, showing comparable performance with state-of-the-art lossy compression methods, SZ and ZFP. Moreover, our method provides viable reconstructed data for various checkpoint/restart scenarios in the FLASH application, thus is considered to be a promising approach for lossy data compression in HPC I/O software stacks.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1751143
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10091960
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 35th Symposium on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies (MSST)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 79 to 91
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Scientific simulations run by high-performance computing (HPC) systems produce a large amount of data, which causes an extreme I/O bottleneck and a huge storage burden. Applying compression techniques can mitigate such overheads through reducing the data size. Unlike traditional lossless compressions, error-controlled lossy compressions, such as SZ, ZFP, and DCTZ, designed for scientists who demand not only high compression ratios but also a guarantee of certain degree of precision, is coming into prominence. While rate-distortion efficiency of recent lossy compressors, especially the DCT-based one, is promising due to its high-compression encoding, the overall coding architecture is still conservative, necessitating the quantization that strikes a balance between different encoding possibilities and varying rate-distortions. In this paper, we aim to improve the performance of DCT-based compressor, namely DCTZ, by optimizing the quantization model and encoding mechanism. Specifically, we propose a bit-efficient quantizer based on the DCTZ framework, develop a unique ordering mechanism based on the quantization table, and extend the encoding index. We evaluate the performance of our optimized DCTZ in terms of rate-distortion using real-world HPC datasets. Our experimental evaluations demonstrate that, on average, our proposed approach can improve the compression ratio of the original DCTZ by 1.38x. Moreover, combined with the extended encoding mechanism, the optimized DCTZ shows a competitive performance with state-of-the-art lossy compressors, SZ and ZFP.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/MSST.2019.00-14
