An assessment of large language models for OpenMP-based code parallelization: a user perspective

Abstract

Large language models have sparked a lot of attention in the research community in recent days, especially with the introduction of practical tools such as ChatGPT and Github Copilot. Their ability to solve complex programming tasks was also shown in several studies and commercial solutions increasing the interest in using them for software development in different fields. High performance computing is one of such fields, where parallel programming techniques have been extensively used to utilize raw computing power available in contemporary multicore and manycore processors. In this paper, we perform an evaluation of the ChatGPT and Github Copilot tools for OpenMP-based code parallelization using a proposed methodology. We used nine different benchmark applications which represent typical parallel programming workloads and compared their OpenMP-based parallel solutions produced manually and using ChatGPT and Github Copilot in terms of obtained speedup, applied optimizations, and quality of the solution. ChatGPT 3.5 and Github Copilot installed with Visual Studio Code 1.88 were used. We concluded that both tools can produce correct parallel code in most cases. However, performance-wise, ChatGPT can match manually produced and optimized parallel code only in simpler cases, as it lacks a deeper understanding of the code and the context. The results are much better with Github Copilot, where much less effort is needed to obtain correct and performant parallel solution.