A new AXT format for an efficient SpMV product using AVX-512 instructions and CUDA

The Sparse Matrix-Vector (SpMV) product is a key operation used in many scientific applications. This work proposes a new sparse matrix storage scheme, the AXT format, that improves the SpMV performance on vector capability platforms. AXT can be adapted to different platforms, improving the storage efficiency for matrices with different sparsity patterns. Intel AVX-512 instructions and CUDA are used to optimise the performances of the four different AXT subvariants. Performance comparisons are made with the Compressed Sparse Row (CSR) and AXC formats on an Intel Xeon Gold 6148 processor and an NVIDIA Tesla V100 Graphics Processing Units using 26 matrices. On the Intel platform the overall AXT performance is 18% and 44.3% higher than the AXC and CSR respectively, reaching speed-up factors of up to x7.33. On the NVIDIA platform the AXT performance is 44% and 8% higher than the AXC and CSR performances respectively, reaching speed-up factors of up to x378.5.

Automated summary

The paper introduces a new sparse matrix storage format AXT, which improves SpMV performance on vector capability platforms. By optimizing different subvariants of AXT and comparing performance on Intel and NVIDIA platforms, it is shown that AXT outperforms AXC and CSR significantly.