Creating Commercial Parallel Statistical Software

描述(申请人提供)：统计复杂性的增长 方法以及这些方法在不断增长的数据集上的应用 研究人员已经超过了单处理器计算能力的增长速度 电脑。在生物医学领域，这一点最为真实。 复杂的估计和模拟模型激增。 由于服务器的市场，多处理器计算机广泛可用， 但在这样的计算机上运行的并行统计软件并不是 商业上可以买到的。我们建议扩展STATA，一个广泛的统计系统 被研究人员用来开发多处理器计算机。的目标是 项目的目的是通过以下方式促进复杂统计模型的估计 利用多处理器计算机的优势。 我们的初步分析表明，双处理器计算机上的Stata可以 预计执行统计分析的速度约为 单处理器计算机；4处理器计算机，速度是其3.0倍；16 处理器计算机，速度是它的6.4倍。在第一阶段项目中，两个阶段都是 将修改用于Linux的Windows和Stata，并对 可并行化的Stata分数和观察到的性能 改进。然后将具体的评估标准应用于这些 测量。 建议的商业应用： 该项目将制作市面上可获得的统计资料包Stata的并行版本的概念验证版本。如果这个概念验证版本像我们预期的那样运行，我们将在后续的第二阶段项目中生产一个用于商业分发的版本。没有商业的、现成的统计包是针对多处理器机器进行并行的。商业上可用的并行化STATA将服务于这个不断增长的市场。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The growth in complexity of statistical methods and the application of those methods to ever-growing datasets by researchers has outpaced the growth in the computing power of uniprocessor computers. Nowhere is this more true than in the biomedical arena, where complex estimation and simulation models have proliferated. Multiprocessor computers are widely available owing to the market for servers, but parallelized statistical software to run on such computers is not commercially available. We propose to extend Stata, a statistical system widely used by researchers, to exploit multiprocessor computers. The goal of the project is to facilitate the estimation of complex statistical models by exploiting the advantages of multiprocessor computers. Our preliminary analysis suggests that Stata on a 2-processor computer can be expected to execute statistical analysis about 1.8 times as fast as a single-processor computer; a 4-processor computer, 3.0 times as fast; a 16 Processor computer, 6.4 times as fast. In the Phase I project, both Stata for Windows and Stata for Linux will be modified and measurements made of the fraction of Stata that can be parallelized and the observed performance improvements. Specific evaluation criteria will then be applied to these measurements. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: This project will create a proof-of-concept version of a parallelized edition of the commercially available statistical package Stata. If this proof-of-concept version performs as we expect, we will produce a version for commercial distribution in a subsequent Phase II project. There is no commercial, off-the-shelf statistical package that is parallelized for multiprocessor machines. A commercially available parallelized Stata would serve this growing market.