DDS: integrating data analytics transformations in task-based workflows [version 1; peer review: 1 approved, 2 approved with reservations]

Abstract

High-performance data analytics (HPDA) is a current trend in e-science research that aims to integrate traditional HPC with recent data analytic frameworks. Most of the work done in this field has focused on improving data analytic frameworks by implementing their engines on top of HPC technologies such as Message Passing Interface. However, there is a lack of integration from an application development perspective. HPC workflows have their own parallel programming models, while data analytic (DA) algorithms are mainly implemented using data transformations and executed with frameworks like Spark. Task-based programming models (TBPMs) are a very efficient approach for implementing HPC workflows. Data analytic transformations can also be decomposed as a set of tasks and implemented with a task-based programming model. In this paper, we present a methodology to develop HPDA applications on top of TBPMs that allow developers to combine HPC workflows and data analytic transformations seamlessly. A prototype of this approach has been implemented on top of the PyCOMPSs task- based programming model to validate two aspects: HPDA applications can be seamlessly developed and have better performance than Spark. We compare our results using different programs. Finally, we conclude with the idea of integrating DA into HPC applications and evaluation of our method against Spark.