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Dynamic Load Balancing and the Zoltan Toolkit

February 17, 2004

Date: Tuesday, February 17th, 2004
Time: 11am-12:15pm
Location: Woodward 149

Karen Devine, <[email protected]>
Discrete Algorithms and Math Department Sandia National Laboratories

Abstract: Efficient and effective dynamic load balancing is critical in parallel, unstructured and/or adaptive computations. Dynamic load-balancing algorithms assign work to processors during the course of a computation to reflect changing processor workloads (e.g., due to mesh refinement in adaptive finite element simulations) or changing data locality (e.g., due to deformation in crash simulations). The Zoltan library provides a suite of parallel, dynamic load-balancing algorithms, allowing application developers to easily compare the effectiveness of different strategies within their applications. Zoltan also provides tools commonly needed by parallel applications, including data migration functions, distributed data directories, unstructured communication utilities, matrix ordering, and dynamic memory debugging utilities. Zoltan's object-based interface and data-structure-neutral design make it easy to use Zoltan in a variety of applications. This talk will describe Zoltan's dynamic load-balancing algorithms, design, and usage in applications. Results from applications using Zoltan will also be presented.