Towards a Hierarchical Exascale Framework for Iterative Parallel Data Analysis Algorithms

Several parallel and distributed data mining algorithms have been proposed in literature to perform large scale data analysis, overcoming the bottleneck of traditional methods on a single machine. However, although the master-worker approach greatly simplifies the synchronization of all nodes since only the master is in charge to do that, it also presents several problematic issues for large-scale data analysis tasks (involving thousands or millions of nodes). This paper presents a hierarchical (or multi-level) master-worker framework for iterative parallel data analysis algorithms, to overcome the scalability issues affecting classic master-worker solutions. Specifically, the framework is composed of (more than one) merger and worker nodes organized in a k-tree structure, in which the workers are on the leaves and the mergers are on the root and the internal nodes in the tree.