An order-invariant real-to-integer conversion sum

Robert Hallberg, Alistair Adcroft

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper describes a technique for obtaining sums of floating point values that are independent of the order-of-operations, and thus attractive for use in global sums in massively parallel computations. The basic idea described here is to convert the floating point values into a representation using a set of long integers, with enough carry-bits to allow these integers to be summed across processors without need of carries at intermediate stages, before conversion of the final sum back to a real number. This approach is being used successfully in an earth system model, in which reproducibility of results is essential.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)140-143
Number of pages4
JournalParallel Computing
Volume40
Issue number5-6
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2014

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Artificial Intelligence

Keywords

  • Fixed-point
  • Global sums
  • Order-invariant
  • Parallel programming
  • Reproducibility

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