Opportunities for Cost Savings with In-Transit Visualization

Abstract

We analyze the opportunities for in-transit visualization to provide cost savings compared to in-line visualization. We begin by developing a cost model that includes factors related to both in-line and intransit which allows comparisons to be made between the two methods. We then run a series of studies to create a corpus of data for our model. We run two different visualization algorithms, one that is computation heavy and one that is communication heavy with concurrencies up to 32, 768 cores. Our primary results are in exploring the cost model within the context of our corpus. Our findings show that in-transit consistently achieves significant cost efficiencies by running visualization algorithms at lower concurrency, and that in many cases these efficiencies are enough to offset other costs (transfer, blocking, and additional nodes) to be cost effective overall. Finally, this work informs future studies, which can focus on choosing ideal configurations for in-transit processing that can consistently achieve cost efficiencies.

A Hybrid in Situ Approach for Cost Efficient Image Database Generation

“…With Flexpath [18], the authors focus on saving transfer costs by reducing data movements or optimizing the data placement based on network topology and other performance influencing factors. Damaris [19] considered the issue of variability, while Kress et al considered using in transit to reduce scalability in two separate studies [20], [21]. Our work can be viewed as a continuation of the Kress work, but with adding support for rightsizing, and, to a lesser extent, variability and overhead.…”

“…We also were enthused by our comparisons with in transit processing. While Kress et al [21] was the first to show that in transit could save on scalability inefficiency enough to offset overhead, their approach was significantly more susceptible to rightsizing effects. In other words, they achieved maximum savings when their resource allocation had rightsizing harmony, but any deviation from that harmony immediately began reducing those savings.…”