Limitations of Floating-point Arithmetic¶

Most practitioners of numeric calculations are aware that addition of floating-point numbers is non-associative; for instance

>>>  (.1 + .2) + .3
0.6000000000000001


is not identical to

>>> .1 + (.2 + .3)
0.6


Other floating-point operations, such as multiplication, are also non-associative. The order in which operations are performed plays a role in the results of a calculation.

Single-precision floating-point variables are able to represent integers between [-16777216, 16777216] exactly, but start losing precision beyond that range; for instance:

>>> numpy.float32(16777216)
16777216.0

>>> numpy.float32(16777217)
16777216.0


This loss of precision is even more apparent for larger values:

>>> numpy.float32(123456786432)
123456780000.0

>>> numpy.float32(123456786433)
123456790000.0


These properties of floating-point numbers have critical implications for numerical reproducibility of scientific computations, particularly in a parallel or distributed computing environment.

For the purposes of this discussion, let us define numerical reproducibility as obtaining bit-wise identical results for different runs of the same computation on either the same machine or different machines.

Given that the OpenQuake engine works by parallelizing calculations, numerical reproducibility cannot be fully guaranteed, even for different runs on the same machine (unless the computation is run using the –no-distribute or –nd flag).

Consider the following strategies for distributing the calculation of the asset losses for a set of events, followed by aggregation of the results for the portfolio due to all of the events. The assets could be split into blocks with each task computing the losses for a particular block of assets and for all events, and the partial losses coming in from each task is aggregated at the end. Alternatively, the assets could be kept as a single block, splitting the set of events/ruptures into blocks instead; once again the engine has to aggregate partial losses coming in from each of the tasks. The order of the tasks is arbitrary, because it is impossible to know how long each task will take before the computation actually begins.

For instance, suppose there are 3 tasks, the first one producing a partial loss of 0.1 billion, the second one of 0.2 billion, and the third one of 0.3 billion. If we run the calculation and the order in which the results are received is 1-2-3, we will compute a total loss of (.1 + .2) + .3 = 0.6000000000000001 billion. On the other hand, if for some reason the order in which the results arrive is 2-3-1, say for instance, if the first core is particularly hot and the operating system decides to enable some throttling on it, then the aggregation will be (.2 + .3) + .1 = 0.6 billion, which is different from the previous value by 1.11E-7 units. This example assumes the use of Python’s IEEE-754 “double precision” 64-bit floats.

However, the engine uses single-precision 32-bit floats rather than double-precision 64-bit floats in a tradeoff necessary for reducing the memory demand (both RAM and disk space) for large computations, so the precision of results is less than in the above example. 64-bit floats have 53 bits of precision, and this why the relative error in the example above was around 1.11E-16 (i.e. 2^-53). 32-bit floats have only 24 bits of precision, so we should expect a relative error of around 6E-8 (i.e. 2^-24), which for the example above would be around 60 units. Loss of precision in representing and storing large numbers is a factor that must be considered when running large computations.

By itself, such differences may be negligible for most computations. However, small differences may accumulate when there are hundreds or even thousands of tasks handling different parts of the overall computation and sending back results for aggregation.

Anticipating these issues, some adjustments can be made to the input models in order to circumvent or at least minimize surprises arising from floating-point arithmetic. Representing asset values in the exposure using thousands of dollars as the unit instead of dollars could be one such defensive measure.

This is why, as an aid to the interested user, starting from version 3.9, the engine logs a warning if it finds inconsistencies beyond a tolerance level in the aggregated loss results.