Parallel matrix multiplication is one of the most studied fundamental problems in distributed and high performance computing. We obtain a new parallel algorithm that is based on Strassen's fast matrix multiplication and minimizes communication. The algorithm outperforms all known parallel matrix multiplication algorithms, classical and Strassen-based, both asymptotically and in practice. A critical bottleneck in parallelizing Strassen's algorithm is the communication between the processors. Ballard, Demmel, Holtz, and Schwartz (SPAA '11) prove lower bounds on these communication costs, using expansion properties of the underlying computation graph. Our algorithm matches these lower bounds, and so is communication-optimal. It exhibits perfect strong scaling within the maximum possible range. Benchmarking our implementation on a Cray XT4, we obtain speedups over classical and Strassen-based algorithms ranging from 24% to 184% for a fixed matrix dimension * Research supported by Microsoft (Award #024263) and Intel (Award #024894) funding and by matching funding by U.C. Discovery (Award #DIG07-10227 Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Our parallelization approach generalizes to other fast matrix multiplication algorithms.
In REF , a parallel algorithm based on Strassen's fast matrix multiplication, CommunicationAvoiding Parallel Strassen (CAPS), is described.
Communication-optimal parallel algorithm for strassen's matrix multiplication
SPAA '12
Computer Science Mathematics