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In this paper, we explore the composition capabilities of the Template Task Graph (TTG) programming model. We show how fine-grain composition of tasks is possible in TTG between DAGs belonging to different libraries, even in a distributed setup. We illustrate the benefits of this fine-grain composition on a linear algebra operation, the matrix inversion via the Cholesky method, which consists of three operations that need to be applied in sequence. Evaluation on a cluster of many core shows that the transparent fine-grain composition implements the complex operation without introducing unnecessary synchronizations, increasing the overlap of communication and computation, and thus improving significantly the performance of the entire composed operation. 

Shared memory parallel programming models strive to provide low-overhead execution environments. Task-based programming models, in particular, are well-suited to cope with the ubiquitous multi- and many-core systems since they allow applications to express all available concurrency to a scheduler, which is tasked with exploiting the available hardware resources. It is general consensus that atomic operations should be preferred over locks and mutexes to avoid inter-thread serialization and the resulting loss in efficiency. However, even atomic operations may serialize threads if not used judiciously. In this work, we will discuss several optimizations applied to TTG and the underlying PaRSEC runtime system aiming at removing contentious atomic operations to reduce the overhead of task management to a few hundred clock cycles. The result is an optimized data-flow programming system that seamlessly scales from a single node to distributed execution and which is able to compete with OpenMP in shared memory. 

Due to intense interest in the potential applications of quantum computing, it is critical to understand the basis for potential exponential quantum advantage in quantum chemistry. Here we gather the evidence for this case in the most common task in quantum chemistry, namely, ground-state energy estimation, for generic chemical problems where heuristic quantum state preparation might be assumed to be efficient. The availability of exponential quantum advantage then centers on whether features of the physical problem that enable efficient heuristic quantum state preparation also enable efficient solution by classical heuristics. Through numerical studies of quantum state preparation and empirical complexity analysis (including the error scaling) of classical heuristics, in both ab initio and model Hamiltonian settings, we conclude that evidence for such an exponential advantage across chemical space has yet to be found. While quantum computers may still prove useful for ground-state quantum chemistry through polynomial speedups, it may be prudent to assume exponential speedups are not generically available for this problem.

 

We present and evaluate TTG, a novel programming model and its C++ implementation that by marrying the ideas of control and data flowgraph programming supports compact specification and efficient distributed execution of dynamic and irregular applications. Programming interfaces that support task-based execution often only support shared memory parallel environments; a few support distributed memory environments, either by discovering the entire DAG of tasks on all processes, or by introducing explicit communications. The first approach limits scalability, while the second increases the complexity of programming. We demonstrate how TTG can address these issues without sacrificing scalability or programmability by providing higher-level abstractions than conventionally provided by task-centric programming systems, without impeding the ability of these runtimes to manage task creation and execution as well as data and resource management efficiently. TTG supports distributed memory execution over 2 different task runtimes, PaRSEC and MADNESS. Performance of four paradigmatic applications (in graph analytics, dense and block-sparse linear algebra, and numerical integrodifferential calculus) with various degrees of irregularity implemented in TTG is illustrated on large distributed-memory platforms and compared to the state-of-the-art implementations.