I'm trying to speed up the solution time for a dynamic programming problem in Julia (v. 0.5.0), via parallel processing. The problem involves choosing the optimal values for every element of a 1073 x 19 matrix at every iteration, until successive matrix differences fall within a tolerance. I thought that, within each iteration, filling in the values for each element of the matrix could be parallelized. However, I'm seeing a huge performance degradation using SharedArray, and I'm wondering if there's a better way to approach parallel processing for this problem.
I construct the arguments for the function below:
est_params = [.788,.288,.0034,.1519,.1615,.0041,.0077,.2,0.005,.7196]
r = 0.015
tau = 0.35
rho =est_params[1]
sigma =est_params[2]
delta = 0.15
gamma =est_params[3]
a_capital =est_params[4]
lambda1 =est_params[5]
lambda2 =est_params[6]
s =est_params[7]
theta =est_params[8]
mu =est_params[9]
p_bar_k_ss =est_params[10]
beta = (1+r)^(-1)
sigma_range = 4
gz = 19
gp = 29
gk = 37
lnz=collect(linspace(-sigma_range*sigma,sigma_range*sigma,gz))
z=exp(lnz)
gk_m = fld(gk,2)
# Need to add mu somewhere to k_ss
k_ss = (theta*(1-tau)/(r+delta))^(1/(1-theta))
k=cat(1,map(i->k_ss*((1-delta)^i),collect(1:gk_m)),map(i->k_ss/((1-delta)^i),collect(1:gk_m)))
insert!(k,gk_m+1,k_ss)
sort!(k)
p_bar=p_bar_k_ss*k_ss
p = collect(linspace(-p_bar/2,p_bar,gp))
#Tauchen
N = length(z)
Z = zeros(N,1)
Zprob = zeros(Float32,N,N)
Z[N] = lnz[length(z)]
Z[1] = lnz[1]
zstep = (Z[N] - Z[1]) / (N - 1)
for i=2:(N-1)
Z[i] = Z[1] + zstep * (i - 1)
end
for a = 1 : N
for b = 1 : N
if b == 1
Zprob[a,b] = 0.5*erfc(-((Z[1] - mu - rho * Z[a] + zstep / 2) / sigma)/sqrt(2))
elseif b == N
Zprob[a,b] = 1 - 0.5*erfc(-((Z[N] - mu - rho * Z[a] - zstep / 2) / sigma)/sqrt(2))
else
Zprob[a,b] = 0.5*erfc(-((Z[b] - mu - rho * Z[a] + zstep / 2) / sigma)/sqrt(2)) -
0.5*erfc(-((Z[b] - mu - rho * Z[a] - zstep / 2) / sigma)/sqrt(2))
end
end
end
# Collecting tauchen results in a 2 element array of linspace and array; [2] gets array
# Zprob=collect(tauchen(gz, rho, sigma, mu, sigma_range))[2]
Zcumprob=zeros(Float32,gz,gz)
# 2 in cumsum! denotes the 2nd dimension, i.e. columns
cumsum!(Zcumprob, Zprob,2)
gm = gk * gp
control=zeros(gm,2)
for i=1:gk
control[(1+gp*(i-1)):(gp*i),1]=fill(k[i],(gp,1))
control[(1+gp*(i-1)):(gp*i),2]=p
end
endog=copy(control)
E=Array(Float32,gm,gm,gz)
for h=1:gm
for m=1:gm
for j=1:gz
# set the nonzero net debt indicator
if endog[h,2]<0
p_ind=1
else
p_ind=0
end
# set the investment indicator
if (control[m,1]-(1-delta)*endog[h,1])!=0
i_ind=1
else
i_ind=0
end
E[m,h,j] = (1-tau)*z[j]*(endog[h,1]^theta) + control[m,2]-endog[h,2]*(1+r*(1-tau)) +
delta*endog[h,1]*tau-(control[m,1]-(1-delta)*endog[h,1]) -
(i_ind*gamma*endog[h,1]+endog[h,1]*(a_capital/2)*(((control[m,1]-(1-delta)*endog[h,1])/endog[h,1])^2)) +
s*endog[h,2]*p_ind
elem = E[m,h,j]
if E[m,h,j]<0
E[m,h,j]=elem+lambda1*elem-.5*lambda2*elem^2
else
E[m,h,j]=elem
end
end
end
end
I then constructed the function with serial processing. The two for loops iterate through each element to find the largest value in a 1072-sized (=the gm scalar argument in the function) array:
function dynam_serial(E,gm,gz,beta,Zprob)
v = Array(Float32,gm,gz )
fill!(v,E[cld(gm,2),cld(gm,2),cld(gz,2)])
Tv = Array(Float32,gm,gz)
# Set parameters for the loop
convcrit = 0.0001 # chosen convergence criterion
diff = 1 # arbitrary initial value greater than convcrit
while diff>convcrit
exp_v=v*Zprob'
for h=1:gm
for j=1:gz
Tv[h,j]=findmax(E[:,h,j] + beta*exp_v[:,j])[1]
end
end
diff = maxabs(Tv - v)
v=copy(Tv)
end
end
Timing this, I get:
@time dynam_serial(E,gm,gz,beta,Zprob)
> 106.880008 seconds (91.70 M allocations: 203.233 GB, 15.22% gc time)
Now, I try using Shared Arrays to benefit from parallel processing. Note that I reconfigured the iteration so that I only have one for loop, rather than two. I also use v=deepcopy(Tv); otherwise, v is copied as an Array object, rather than a SharedArray:
function dynam_parallel(E,gm,gz,beta,Zprob)
v = SharedArray(Float32,(gm,gz),init = S -> S[Base.localindexes(S)] = myid() )
fill!(v,E[cld(gm,2),cld(gm,2),cld(gz,2)])
# Set parameters for the loop
convcrit = 0.0001 # chosen convergence criterion
diff = 1 # arbitrary initial value greater than convcrit
while diff>convcrit
exp_v=v*Zprob'
Tv = SharedArray(Float32,gm,gz,init = S -> S[Base.localindexes(S)] = myid() )
@sync @parallel for hj=1:(gm*gz)
j=cld(hj,gm)
h=mod(hj,gm)
if h==0;h=gm;end;
@async Tv[h,j]=findmax(E[:,h,j] + beta*exp_v[:,j])[1]
end
diff = maxabs(Tv - v)
v=deepcopy(Tv)
end
end
Timing the parallel version; and using a 4-core 2.5 GHz I7 processor with 16GB of memory, I get:
addprocs(3)
@time dynam_parallel(E,gm,gz,beta,Zprob)
> 164.237208 seconds (2.64 M allocations: 201.812 MB, 0.04% gc time)
Am I doing something incorrect here? Or is there a better way to approach parallel processing in Julia for this particular problem? I've considered using Distributed Arrays, but it's difficult for me to see how to apply them to the present problem.
UPDATE:
Per @DanGetz and his helpful comments, I turned instead to trying to speed up the serial processing version. I was able to get performance down to 53.469780 seconds (67.36 M allocations: 103.419 GiB, 19.12% gc time) through:
1) Upgrading to 0.6.0 (saved about 25 seconds), which includes the helpful @views macro.
2) Preallocating the main array I'm trying to fill in (Tv), per the section on Preallocating Outputs in the Julia Performance Tips: https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/performance-tips/. (saved another 25 or so seconds)
The biggest remaining slow-down seems to be coming from the add_vecs function, which sums together subarrays of two larger matrices. I've tried devectorizing and using BLAS functions, but haven't been able to produce better performance.
In any event, the improved code for dynam_serial is below:
function add_vecs(r::Array{Float32},h::Int,j::Int,E::Array{Float32},exp_v::Array{Float32},beta::Float32)
@views r=E[:,h,j] + beta*exp_v[:,j]
return r
end
function dynam_serial(E::Array{Float32},gm::Int,gz::Int,beta::Float32,Zprob::Array{Float32})
v = Array{Float32}(gm,gz)
fill!(v,E[cld(gm,2),cld(gm,2),cld(gz,2)])
Tv = Array{Float32}(gm,gz)
r = Array{Float32}(gm)
# Set parameters for the loop
convcrit = 0.0001 # chosen convergence criterion
diff = 1 # arbitrary initial value greater than convcrit
while diff>convcrit
exp_v=v*Zprob'
for h=1:gm
for j=1:gz
@views Tv[h,j]=findmax(add_vecs(r,h,j,E,exp_v,beta))[1]
end
end
diff = maximum(abs,Tv - v)
v=copy(Tv)
end
return Tv
end
