Shared Concepts and Topics

requests that the high-performance analytical procedure write periodic updates to the SAS log when observations are sent from the client to the appliance for distributed processing.

High-performance analytical procedures do not have to use input data that are stored on the appliance. You can perform distributed computations regardless of the origin or format of the input data, provided that the data are in a format that can be read by the SAS System (for example, because a SAS/ACCESS engine is available).

In the following example, the HPREG procedure performs LASSO variable selection where the input data set is stored on the client:

proc hpreg data=work.one;
   model y = x1-x500;
   selection method=lasso;
   performance nodes=10 host='mydca' commit=10000;
run;

In order to perform the work as requested using 10 nodes on the appliance, the data set Work.One needs to be distributed to the appliance.

High-performance analytical procedures send the data in blocks to the appliance. Whenever the number of observations sent exceeds an integer multiple of the COMMIT= size, a SAS log message is produced. The message indicates the actual number of observations distributed, and not an integer multiple of the COMMIT= size.

requests a table that shows a timing breakdown of the procedure steps.

specifies the name of the appliance host in single or double quotation marks. If this option is specified, it overrides the value of the GRIDHOST environment variable.

is a deprecated option that specifies whether to run the high-performance analytical procedure in symmetric (SYM) mode or asymmetric (ASYM) mode. This option overrides the GRIDMODE environment variable.

specifies the time-out in seconds for a high-performance analytical procedure to wait for a connection to the appliance and establish a connection back to the client. The default is 120 seconds. If jobs are submitted to the appliance through workload management tools that might suspend access to the appliance for a longer period, you might want to increase the time-out value.

specifies the directory in which the shared libraries for the high-performance analytical procedure are installed on the appliance. Specifying the INSTALL= option overrides the GRIDINSTALLLOC environment variable.

specifies the fully qualified path to the description file of a SAS LASR Analytic Server instance. If the input data set is held in memory by this LASR Analytic Server instance, then the procedure runs alongside LASR. This option is not needed to run alongside LASR if the DATA= specification of the input data uses a libref that is associated with a LASR Analytic Server instance. For more information, see the section Alongside-LASR Distributed Execution and the SAS LASR Analytic Server: Reference Guide.

specifies the number of nodes in the distributed computing environment, provided that the data are not processed alongside the database.

Specifying NODES=0 indicates that you want to process the data in single-machine mode on the client machine. If the input data are not alongside the database, this is the default. The high-performance analytical procedures then perform the analysis on the client. For example, the following sets of statements are equivalent:

proc hplogistic data=one;
   model y = x;
run;

proc hplogistic data=one;
   model y = x;
   performance nodes=0;
run;

If the data are not read alongside the database, the NODES= option specifies the number of nodes on the appliance that are involved in the analysis. For example, the following statements perform the analysis in distributed mode by using 10 units of work on the appliance that is identified in the HOST= option:

proc hplogistic data=one;
   model y = x;
   performance nodes=10 host="hpa.sas.com";
run;

If the number of nodes can be modified by the application, you can specify a NODES=n option, where n exceeds the number of physical nodes on the appliance. The SAS High-Performance Econometrics software then oversubscribes the nodes and associates nodes with multiple units of work. For example, on a system that has 16 appliance nodes, the following statements oversubscribe the system by a factor of 3:

proc hplogistic data=one;
   model y = x;
   performance nodes=48 host="hpa.sas.com";
run;

Usually, it is not advisable to oversubscribe the system because the analytic code is optimized for a certain level of multithreading on the nodes that depends on the CPU count. You can specify NODES=ALL if you want to use all available nodes on the appliance without oversubscribing the system.

If the data are read alongside the distributed database on the appliance, specifying a nonzero value for the NODES= option has no effect. The number of units of work in the distributed computing environment is then determined by the distribution of the data and cannot be altered. For example, if you are running alongside an appliance with 24 nodes, the NODES= option in the following statements is ignored:

libname GPLib greenplm server=gpdca user=XXX password=YYY
              database=ZZZ;
proc hplogistic data=gplib.one;
   model y = x;
   performance nodes=10 host="hpa.sas.com";
run;

specifies the number of threads for analytic computations and overrides the SAS system option THREADS | NOTHREADS. If you do not specify the NTHREADS= option, the number of threads is determined based on the number of CPUs on the host on which the analytic computations execute. The algorithm by which a CPU count is converted to a thread count is specific to the high-performance analytical procedure. Most procedures create one thread per CPU for the analytic computations.

By default, high-performance analytical procedures run in multiple concurrent threads unless multithreading has been turned off by the NOTHREADS system option or you force single-threaded execution by specifying NTHREADS=1. The largest number that can be specified for n is 256. Individual high-performance analytical procedures can impose more stringent limits if called for by algorithmic considerations.

Note: The SAS system options THREADS | NOTHREADS apply to the client machine on which the SAS high-performance analytical procedures execute. They do not apply to the compute nodes in a distributed environment.