Concepts for OpenMP Target Offload Resilience

Recent reliability issues with one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), demonstrated the need for resilience in large-scale heterogeneous computing. OpenMP currently does not address error and failure behavior. This paper takes a first step toward resilience for heterogeneous systems by providing the concepts for resilient OpenMP offload to devices. Using real-world error and failure observations, the paper describes the concepts and terminology for resilient OpenMP target offload, including error and failure classes and resilience strategies. It details the experienced general-purpose computing graphics processing unit (GPGPU) errors and failures in Titan. It further proposes improvements in OpenMP, including a preliminary prototype design, to support resilient offload to devices for efficient handling of errors and failures in heterogeneous high-performance computing (HPC) systems.