Accelerating Learning to Rank via SVM with OpenCL and OpenMP on Heterogeneous Platforms

Abstract

Support vector machine (SVM) is a popular algorithm for learning to rank, but the training speed of SVM is the bottleneck when dealing with large size data problems. Recently, heterogeneous computing platforms, such as graphics processing unit (GPU) and Many Integrated Core (MIC), have exhibited huge superiority in High Performance Computing domain. Open Computing Language (OpenCL) and Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP) are two popular parallel programming interface for different Heterogeneous Platforms. To resolve the speed problem of RSVM, comparison of the performance of different parallel programming models on different heterogeneous platforms is important. We designed OpenMPbased parallel learning to Rank SVM (PLRSVM) for multi-core CPU and MIC, and OpenCL-based PLRSVM for multi-core CPU, GPU and MIC. The experimental result shows the different performance between OpenMP based program and OpenCL based program. The OpenCL based program significantly speeds up training process of SVM and shows good portability on heterogeneous devices. The experiment also suggests that selection of suitable programming models according to the hardware platform and the structure of serial algorithm is an important step to acquire high performance of parallel algorithm.