Lesson plan
Performance portability
Performance portability refers to the ability of computer programs and applications to operate effectively across different platforms. Developers of performance portable applications seek to support multiple platforms without impeding performance, and ideally while minimizing platform-specific code. It is a sought after commodity within the HPC (high performance computing) community, however there is no universal or agreed upon way to measure it. There is some contention as to whether portability refers to the portability of an application or the portability of the source code. Performance can be measured in two ways: either by comparing an optimized version of an application with its portable version; or to compare the theoretical peak performance of an application based on how many FLOPs are performed, with the data moved from main-memory to the processor. The diversity of hardware makes developing software that works across a wide variety of machines increasingly important for the longevity of the application.
Article summary
Performance portability refers to the ability of computer programs and applications to operate effectively across different platforms. Developers of performance portable applications seek to support multiple platforms without impeding performance, and ideally while minimizing platform-specific code. It is a sought after commodity within the HPC (high performance computing) community, however there is no universal or agreed upon way to measure it. There is some contention as to whether portability refers to the portability of an application or the portability of the source code. Performance can be measured in two ways: either by comparing an optimized version of an application with its portable version; or to compare the theoretical peak performance of an application based on how many FLOPs are performed, with the data moved from main-memory to the processor. The diversity of hardware makes developing software that works across a wide variety of machines increasingly important for the longevity of the application.
Key claims
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.