Timing Models and Local Stopping Criteria for Asynchronous Iterative Algorithms

Asynchronous iterative algorithms can reduce much of the data dependencies associated with synchronization barriers. The reported study investigates the potentials of asynchronous iterative algorithms by quantifying the critical parallel processing factors. Specifically, a time complexity-based analysis method is used to understand the inherent interdependencies between computing and communication overheads for the parallel asynchronous algorithm. The results show, not only that the computational experiments closely match the analytical results, but also that the use of asynchronous iterative algorithms can be beneficial for a vast number of parallel processing environments. The choice of local stopping criteria that is critically important to the overall system performance is investigated in depth. 1999 Academic Press