A Fast Tree-Based Barrier Synchronization on Switch-Based Irregular Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a Barrier Tree for Irregular Networks (BTIN) and a barrier synchronization scheme using BTIN for switch-based cluster systems. The synchronization latency of the proposed BTIN scheme is asymptotically O(log n) while that of the fastest scheme reported in the literature is bounded by O(n), where n is the number of member nodes. Extensive simulation study shows that, for the group size of 256, the BTIN scheme improves the synchronization latency by a factor of 3.3 ∼ 3.8, and is more scalable than conventional schemes with less network traffic.