/* StarPU --- Runtime system for heterogeneous multicore architectures. * * Copyright (C) 2009-2020 Université de Bordeaux, CNRS (LaBRI UMR 5800), Inria * * StarPU is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify * it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at * your option) any later version. * * StarPU is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but * WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. * * See the GNU Lesser General Public License in COPYING.LGPL for more details. */ /*! \page MPISupport MPI Support The integration of MPI transfers within task parallelism is done in a very natural way by the means of asynchronous interactions between the application and StarPU. This is implemented in a separate libstarpumpi library which basically provides "StarPU" equivalents of MPI_* functions, where void * buffers are replaced with ::starpu_data_handle_t, and all GPU-RAM-NIC transfers are handled efficiently by StarPU-MPI. The user has to use the usual mpirun command of the MPI implementation to start StarPU on the different MPI nodes. In case the user wants to run several MPI processes by machine (e.g. one per NUMA node), \ref STARPU_WORKERS_GETBIND should be used to make StarPU take into account the binding set by the MPI launcher (otherwise each StarPU instance would try to bind on all cores of the machine...) An MPI Insert Task function provides an even more seamless transition to a distributed application, by automatically issuing all required data transfers according to the task graph and an application-provided distribution. \section MPIBuild Building with MPI support If a mpicc compiler is already in your PATH, StarPU will automatically enable MPI support in the build. If mpicc is not in PATH, you can specify its location by passing --with-mpicc=/where/there/is/mpicc to ./configure It can be useful to enable MPI tests during make check by passing --enable-mpi-check to ./configure. And similarly to mpicc, if mpiexec in not in PATH, you can specify its location by passing --with-mpiexec=/where/there/is/mpiexec to ./configure, but this is not needed if it is next to mpicc, configure will look there in addition to PATH. Similarly, Fortran examples use mpif90, which can be specified manually with --with-mpifort if it can't be found automatically. \section ExampleDocumentation Example Used In This Documentation The example below will be used as the base for this documentation. It initializes a token on node 0, and the token is passed from node to node, incremented by one on each step. The code is not using StarPU yet. \code{.c} for (loop = 0; loop < nloops; loop++) { int tag = loop*size + rank; if (loop == 0 && rank == 0) { token = 0; fprintf(stdout, "Start with token value %d\n", token); } else { MPI_Recv(&token, 1, MPI_INT, (rank+size-1)%size, tag, MPI_COMM_WORLD); } token++; if (loop == last_loop && rank == last_rank) { fprintf(stdout, "Finished: token value %d\n", token); } else { MPI_Send(&token, 1, MPI_INT, (rank+1)%size, tag+1, MPI_COMM_WORLD); } } \endcode \section NotUsingMPISupport About Not Using The MPI Support Although StarPU provides MPI support, the application programmer may want to keep his MPI communications as they are for a start, and only delegate task execution to StarPU. This is possible by just using starpu_data_acquire(), for instance: \code{.c} for (loop = 0; loop < nloops; loop++) { int tag = loop*size + rank; /* Acquire the data to be able to write to it */ starpu_data_acquire(token_handle, STARPU_W); if (loop == 0 && rank == 0) { token = 0; fprintf(stdout, "Start with token value %d\n", token); } else { MPI_Recv(&token, 1, MPI_INT, (rank+size-1)%size, tag, MPI_COMM_WORLD); } starpu_data_release(token_handle); /* Task delegation to StarPU to increment the token. The execution might * be performed on a CPU, a GPU, etc. */ increment_token(); /* Acquire the update data to be able to read from it */ starpu_data_acquire(token_handle, STARPU_R); if (loop == last_loop && rank == last_rank) { fprintf(stdout, "Finished: token value %d\n", token); } else { MPI_Send(&token, 1, MPI_INT, (rank+1)%size, tag+1, MPI_COMM_WORLD); } starpu_data_release(token_handle); } \endcode In that case, libstarpumpi is not needed. One can also use MPI_Isend() and MPI_Irecv(), by calling starpu_data_release() after MPI_Wait() or MPI_Test() have notified completion. It is however better to use libstarpumpi, to save the application from having to synchronize with starpu_data_acquire(), and instead just submit all tasks and communications asynchronously, and wait for the overall completion. \section SimpleExample Simple Example The flags required to compile or link against the MPI layer are accessible with the following commands: \verbatim $ pkg-config --cflags starpumpi-1.3 # options for the compiler $ pkg-config --libs starpumpi-1.3 # options for the linker \endverbatim \code{.c} void increment_token(void) { struct starpu_task *task = starpu_task_create(); task->cl = &increment_cl; task->handles[0] = token_handle; starpu_task_submit(task); } int main(int argc, char **argv) { int rank, size; starpu_mpi_init_conf(&argc, &argv, 1, MPI_COMM_WORLD, NULL); starpu_mpi_comm_rank(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &rank); starpu_mpi_comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &size); starpu_vector_data_register(&token_handle, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t)&token, 1, sizeof(unsigned)); unsigned nloops = NITER; unsigned loop; unsigned last_loop = nloops - 1; unsigned last_rank = size - 1; for (loop = 0; loop < nloops; loop++) { int tag = loop*size + rank; if (loop == 0 && rank == 0) { starpu_data_acquire(token_handle, STARPU_W); token = 0; fprintf(stdout, "Start with token value %d\n", token); starpu_data_release(token_handle); } else { starpu_mpi_irecv_detached(token_handle, (rank+size-1)%size, tag, MPI_COMM_WORLD, NULL, NULL); } increment_token(); if (loop == last_loop && rank == last_rank) { starpu_data_acquire(token_handle, STARPU_R); fprintf(stdout, "Finished: token value %d\n", token); starpu_data_release(token_handle); } else { starpu_mpi_isend_detached(token_handle, (rank+1)%size, tag+1, MPI_COMM_WORLD, NULL, NULL); } } starpu_task_wait_for_all(); starpu_mpi_shutdown(); if (rank == last_rank) { fprintf(stderr, "[%d] token = %d == %d * %d ?\n", rank, token, nloops, size); STARPU_ASSERT(token == nloops*size); } \endcode We have here replaced MPI_Recv() and MPI_Send() with starpu_mpi_irecv_detached() and starpu_mpi_isend_detached(), which just submit the communication to be performed. The implicit sequential consistency dependencies provide synchronization between mpi reception and emission and the corresponding tasks. The only remaining synchronization with starpu_data_acquire() is at the beginning and the end. \section MPIInitialization How to Initialize StarPU-MPI As seen in the previous example, one has to call starpu_mpi_init_conf() to initialize StarPU-MPI. The third parameter of the function indicates if MPI should be initialized by StarPU or if the application did it itself. If the application initializes MPI itself, it must call MPI_Init_thread() with MPI_THREAD_SERIALIZED or MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE, since StarPU-MPI uses a separate thread to perform the communications. MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE is necessary if the application also performs some MPI communications. \section PointToPointCommunication Point To Point Communication The standard point to point communications of MPI have been implemented. The semantic is similar to the MPI one, but adapted to the DSM provided by StarPU. A MPI request will only be submitted when the data is available in the main memory of the node submitting the request. There are two types of asynchronous communications: the classic asynchronous communications and the detached communications. The classic asynchronous communications (starpu_mpi_isend() and starpu_mpi_irecv()) need to be followed by a call to starpu_mpi_wait() or to starpu_mpi_test() to wait for or to test the completion of the communication. Waiting for or testing the completion of detached communications is not possible, this is done internally by StarPU-MPI, on completion, the resources are automatically released. This mechanism is similar to the pthread detach state attribute which determines whether a thread will be created in a joinable or a detached state. For send communications, data is acquired with the mode ::STARPU_R. When using the \c configure option \ref enable-mpi-pedantic-isend "--enable-mpi-pedantic-isend", the mode ::STARPU_RW is used to make sure there is no more than 1 concurrent \c MPI_Isend() call accessing a data and StarPU does not read from it from tasks during the communication. Internally, all communication are divided in 2 communications, a first message is used to exchange an envelope describing the data (i.e its tag and its size), the data itself is sent in a second message. All MPI communications submitted by StarPU uses a unique tag which has a default value, and can be accessed with the functions starpu_mpi_get_communication_tag() and starpu_mpi_set_communication_tag(). The matching of tags with corresponding requests is done within StarPU-MPI. For any userland communication, the call of the corresponding function (e.g starpu_mpi_isend()) will result in the creation of a StarPU-MPI request, the function starpu_data_acquire_cb() is then called to asynchronously request StarPU to fetch the data in main memory; when the data is ready and the corresponding buffer has already been received by MPI, it will be copied in the memory of the data, otherwise the request is stored in the early requests list. Sending requests are stored in the ready requests list. While requests need to be processed, the StarPU-MPI progression thread does the following:
  1. it polls the ready requests list. For all the ready requests, the appropriate function is called to post the corresponding MPI call. For example, an initial call to starpu_mpi_isend() will result in a call to MPI_Isend(). If the request is marked as detached, the request will then be added in the detached requests list.
  2. it posts a MPI_Irecv() to retrieve a data envelope.
  3. it polls the detached requests list. For all the detached requests, it tests its completion of the MPI request by calling MPI_Test(). On completion, the data handle is released, and if a callback was defined, it is called.
  4. finally, it checks if a data envelope has been received. If so, if the data envelope matches a request in the early requests list (i.e the request has already been posted by the application), the corresponding MPI call is posted (similarly to the first step above). If the data envelope does not match any application request, a temporary handle is created to receive the data, a StarPU-MPI request is created and added into the ready requests list, and thus will be processed in the first step of the next loop.
\ref MPIPtpCommunication gives the list of all the point to point communications defined in StarPU-MPI. \section ExchangingUserDefinedDataInterface Exchanging User Defined Data Interface New data interfaces defined as explained in \ref DefiningANewDataInterface can also be used within StarPU-MPI and exchanged between nodes. Two functions needs to be defined through the type starpu_data_interface_ops. The function starpu_data_interface_ops::pack_data takes a handle and returns a contiguous memory buffer allocated with \code{.c} starpu_malloc_flags(ptr, size, 0) \endcode along with its size where data to be conveyed to another node should be copied. The reversed operation is implemented in the function starpu_data_interface_ops::unpack_data which takes a contiguous memory buffer and recreates the data handle. \code{.c} static int complex_pack_data(starpu_data_handle_t handle, unsigned node, void **ptr, ssize_t *count) { STARPU_ASSERT(starpu_data_test_if_allocated_on_node(handle, node)); struct starpu_complex_interface *complex_interface = (struct starpu_complex_interface *) starpu_data_get_interface_on_node(handle, node); *count = complex_get_size(handle); *ptr = starpu_malloc_on_node_flags(node, *count, 0); memcpy(*ptr, complex_interface->real, complex_interface->nx*sizeof(double)); memcpy(*ptr+complex_interface->nx*sizeof(double), complex_interface->imaginary, complex_interface->nx*sizeof(double)); return 0; } static int complex_unpack_data(starpu_data_handle_t handle, unsigned node, void *ptr, size_t count) { STARPU_ASSERT(starpu_data_test_if_allocated_on_node(handle, node)); struct starpu_complex_interface *complex_interface = (struct starpu_complex_interface *) starpu_data_get_interface_on_node(handle, node); memcpy(complex_interface->real, ptr, complex_interface->nx*sizeof(double)); memcpy(complex_interface->imaginary, ptr+complex_interface->nx*sizeof(double), complex_interface->nx*sizeof(double)); return 0; } static struct starpu_data_interface_ops interface_complex_ops = { ... .pack_data = complex_pack_data, .unpack_data = complex_unpack_data }; \endcode Instead of defining pack and unpack operations, users may want to attach a MPI type to their user defined data interface. The function starpu_mpi_datatype_register() allows to do so. This function takes 3 parameters: the data handle for which the MPI datatype is going to be defined, a function's pointer that will create the MPI datatype, and a function's pointer that will free the MPI datatype. If for some data an MPI datatype can not be built (e.g. complex data structure), the creation function can return -1, StarPU-MPI will then fallback to using pack/unpack. \code{.c} starpu_data_interface handle; starpu_complex_data_register(&handle, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, real, imaginary, 2); starpu_mpi_datatype_register(handle, starpu_complex_interface_datatype_allocate, starpu_complex_interface_datatype_free); \endcode The functions to create and free the MPI datatype are defined as follows. \code{.c} void starpu_complex_interface_datatype_allocate(starpu_data_handle_t handle, MPI_Datatype *mpi_datatype) { int ret; int blocklengths[2]; MPI_Aint displacements[2]; MPI_Datatype types[2] = {MPI_DOUBLE, MPI_DOUBLE}; struct starpu_complex_interface *complex_interface = (struct starpu_complex_interface *) starpu_data_get_interface_on_node(handle, STARPU_MAIN_RAM); MPI_Get_address(complex_interface, displacements); MPI_Get_address(&complex_interface->imaginary, displacements+1); displacements[1] -= displacements[0]; displacements[0] = 0; blocklengths[0] = complex_interface->nx; blocklengths[1] = complex_interface->nx; ret = MPI_Type_create_struct(2, blocklengths, displacements, types, mpi_datatype); STARPU_ASSERT_MSG(ret == MPI_SUCCESS, "MPI_Type_contiguous failed"); ret = MPI_Type_commit(mpi_datatype); STARPU_ASSERT_MSG(ret == MPI_SUCCESS, "MPI_Type_commit failed"); } void starpu_complex_interface_datatype_free(MPI_Datatype *mpi_datatype) { MPI_Type_free(mpi_datatype); } \endcode Note that it is important to make sure no communication is going to occur before the function starpu_mpi_datatype_register() is called. This would produce an undefined result as the data may be received before the function is called, and so the MPI datatype would not be known by the StarPU-MPI communication engine, and the data would be processed with the pack and unpack operations. \code{.c} starpu_data_interface handle; starpu_complex_data_register(&handle, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, real, imaginary, 2); starpu_mpi_datatype_register(handle, starpu_complex_interface_datatype_allocate, starpu_complex_interface_datatype_free); starpu_mpi_barrier(MPI_COMM_WORLD); \endcode \section MPIInsertTaskUtility MPI Insert Task Utility To save the programmer from having to explicit all communications, StarPU provides an "MPI Insert Task Utility". The principe is that the application decides a distribution of the data over the MPI nodes by allocating it and notifying StarPU of this decision, i.e. tell StarPU which MPI node "owns" which data. It also decides, for each handle, an MPI tag which will be used to exchange the content of the handle. All MPI nodes then process the whole task graph, and StarPU automatically determines which node actually execute which task, and trigger the required MPI transfers. The list of functions is described in \ref MPIInsertTask. Here an stencil example showing how to use starpu_mpi_task_insert(). One first needs to define a distribution function which specifies the locality of the data. Note that the data needs to be registered to MPI by calling starpu_mpi_data_register(). This function allows to set the distribution information and the MPI tag which should be used when communicating the data. It also allows to automatically clear the MPI communication cache when unregistering the data. \code{.c} /* Returns the MPI node number where data is */ int my_distrib(int x, int y, int nb_nodes) { /* Block distrib */ return ((int)(x / sqrt(nb_nodes) + (y / sqrt(nb_nodes)) * sqrt(nb_nodes))) % nb_nodes; // /* Other examples useful for other kinds of computations */ // /* / distrib */ // return (x+y) % nb_nodes; // /* Block cyclic distrib */ // unsigned side = sqrt(nb_nodes); // return x % side + (y % side) * size; } \endcode Now the data can be registered within StarPU. Data which are not owned but will be needed for computations can be registered through the lazy allocation mechanism, i.e. with a home_node set to -1. StarPU will automatically allocate the memory when it is used for the first time. One can note an optimization here (the else if test): we only register data which will be needed by the tasks that we will execute. \code{.c} unsigned matrix[X][Y]; starpu_data_handle_t data_handles[X][Y]; for(x = 0; x < X; x++) { for (y = 0; y < Y; y++) { int mpi_rank = my_distrib(x, y, size); if (mpi_rank == my_rank) /* Owning data */ starpu_variable_data_register(&data_handles[x][y], STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t)&(matrix[x][y]), sizeof(unsigned)); else if (my_rank == my_distrib(x+1, y, size) || my_rank == my_distrib(x-1, y, size) || my_rank == my_distrib(x, y+1, size) || my_rank == my_distrib(x, y-1, size)) /* I don't own this index, but will need it for my computations */ starpu_variable_data_register(&data_handles[x][y], -1, (uintptr_t)NULL, sizeof(unsigned)); else /* I know it's useless to allocate anything for this */ data_handles[x][y] = NULL; if (data_handles[x][y]) { starpu_mpi_data_register(data_handles[x][y], x*X+y, mpi_rank); } } } \endcode Now starpu_mpi_task_insert() can be called for the different steps of the application. \code{.c} for(loop=0 ; loopdata_handles[x][y]) will actually run the task. The other MPI nodes will automatically send the required data. To tune the placement of tasks among MPI nodes, one can use ::STARPU_EXECUTE_ON_NODE or ::STARPU_EXECUTE_ON_DATA to specify an explicit node, or the node of a given data (e.g. one of the parameters), or use starpu_mpi_node_selection_register_policy() and ::STARPU_NODE_SELECTION_POLICY to provide a dynamic policy. A function starpu_mpi_task_build() is also provided with the aim to only construct the task structure. All MPI nodes need to call the function, which posts the required send/recv on the various nodes which have to. Only the node which is to execute the task will then return a valid task structure, others will return NULL. This node must submit the task. All nodes then need to call the function starpu_mpi_task_post_build() -- with the same list of arguments as starpu_mpi_task_build() -- to post all the necessary data communications meant to happen after the task execution. \code{.c} struct starpu_task *task; task = starpu_mpi_task_build(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl, STARPU_RW, data_handles[0], STARPU_R, data_handles[1], 0); if (task) starpu_task_submit(task); starpu_mpi_task_post_build(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl, STARPU_RW, data_handles[0], STARPU_R, data_handles[1], 0); \endcode \section MPIInsertPruning Pruning MPI Task Insertion Making all MPI nodes process the whole graph can be a concern with a growing number of nodes. To avoid this, the application can prune the task for loops according to the data distribution, so as to only submit tasks on nodes which have to care about them (either to execute them, or to send the required data). A way to do some of this quite easily can be to just add an if like this: \code{.c} for(loop=0 ; loopmy_distrib function can be inlined by the compiler, the latter can improve the test. If the size can be made a compile-time constant, the compiler can considerably improve the test further. If the distribution function is not too complex and the compiler is very good, the latter can even optimize the for loops, thus dramatically reducing the cost of task submission. To estimate quickly how long task submission takes, and notably how much pruning saves, a quick and easy way is to measure the submission time of just one of the MPI nodes. This can be achieved by running the application on just one MPI node with the following environment variables: \code export STARPU_DISABLE_KERNELS=1 export STARPU_MPI_FAKE_RANK=2 export STARPU_MPI_FAKE_SIZE=1024 \endcode Here we have disabled the kernel function call to skip the actual computation time and only keep submission time, and we have asked StarPU to fake running on MPI node 2 out of 1024 nodes. \section MPITemporaryData Temporary Data To be able to use starpu_mpi_task_insert(), one has to call starpu_mpi_data_register(), so that StarPU-MPI can know what it needs to do for each data. Parameters of starpu_mpi_data_register() are normally the same on all nodes for a given data, so that all nodes agree on which node owns the data, and which tag is used to transfer its value. It can however be useful to register e.g. some temporary data on just one node, without having to register a dumb handle on all nodes, while only one node will actually need to know about it. In this case, nodes which will not need the data can just pass \c NULL to starpu_mpi_task_insert(): \code{.c} starpu_data_handle_t data0 = NULL; if (rank == 0) { starpu_variable_data_register(&data0, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t) &val0, sizeof(val0)); starpu_mpi_data_register(data0, 0, rank); } starpu_mpi_task_insert(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl, STARPU_W, data0, 0); /* Executes on node 0 */ \endcode Here, nodes whose rank is not \c 0 will simply not take care of the data, and consider it to be on another node. This can be mixed various way, for instance here node \c 1 determines that it does not have to care about \c data0, but knows that it should send the value of its \c data1 to node \c 0, which owns data and thus will need the value of \c data1 to execute the task: \code{.c} starpu_data_handle_t data0 = NULL, data1, data; if (rank == 0) { starpu_variable_data_register(&data0, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t) &val0, sizeof(val0)); starpu_mpi_data_register(data0, -1, rank); starpu_variable_data_register(&data1, -1, 0, sizeof(val1)); starpu_variable_data_register(&data, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t) &val, sizeof(val)); } else if (rank == 1) { starpu_variable_data_register(&data1, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t) &val1, sizeof(val1)); starpu_variable_data_register(&data, -1, 0, sizeof(val)); } starpu_mpi_data_register(data, 42, 0); starpu_mpi_data_register(data1, 43, 1); starpu_mpi_task_insert(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl, STARPU_W, data, STARPU_R, data0, STARPU_R, data1, 0); /* Executes on node 0 */ \endcode \section MPIPerNodeData Per-node Data Further than temporary data on just one node, one may want per-node data, to e.g. replicate some computation because that is less expensive than communicating the value over MPI: \code{.c} starpu_data_handle pernode, data0, data1; starpu_variable_data_register(&pernode, -1, 0, sizeof(val)); starpu_mpi_data_register(pernode, -1, STARPU_MPI_PER_NODE); /* Normal data: one on node0, one on node1 */ if (rank == 0) { starpu_variable_data_register(&data0, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t) &val0, sizeof(val0)); starpu_variable_data_register(&data1, -1, 0, sizeof(val1)); } else if (rank == 1) { starpu_variable_data_register(&data0, -1, 0, sizeof(val1)); starpu_variable_data_register(&data1, STARPU_MAIN_RAM, (uintptr_t) &val1, sizeof(val1)); } starpu_mpi_data_register(data0, 42, 0); starpu_mpi_data_register(data1, 43, 1); starpu_mpi_task_insert(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl, STARPU_W, pernode, 0); /* Will be replicated on all nodes */ starpu_mpi_task_insert(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl2, STARPU_RW, data0, STARPU_R, pernode); /* Will execute on node 0, using its own pernode*/ starpu_mpi_task_insert(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl2, STARPU_RW, data1, STARPU_R, pernode); /* Will execute on node 1, using its own pernode*/ \endcode One can turn a normal data into pernode data, by first broadcasting it to all nodes: \code{.c} starpu_data_handle data; starpu_variable_data_register(&data, -1, 0, sizeof(val)); starpu_mpi_data_register(data, 42, 0); /* Compute some value */ starpu_mpi_task_insert(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &cl, STARPU_W, data, 0); /* Node 0 computes it */ /* Get it on all nodes */ starpu_mpi_get_data_on_all_nodes_detached(MPI_COMM_WORLD, data); /* And turn it per-node */ starpu_mpi_data_set_rank(data, STARPU_MPI_PER_NODE); \endcode The data can then be used just like pernode above. \section MPIPriorities Priorities All send functions have a _prio variant which takes an additional priority parameter, which allows to make StarPU-MPI change the order of MPI requests before submitting them to MPI. The default priority is \c 0. When using the starpu_mpi_task_insert() helper, ::STARPU_PRIORITY defines both the task priority and the MPI requests priority. To test how much MPI priorities have a good effect on performance, you can set the environment variable \ref STARPU_MPI_PRIORITIES to \c 0 to disable the use of priorities in StarPU-MPI. \section MPICache MPI Cache Support StarPU-MPI automatically optimizes duplicate data transmissions: if an MPI node \c B needs a piece of data \c D from MPI node \c A for several tasks, only one transmission of \c D will take place from \c A to \c B, and the value of \c D will be kept on \c B as long as no task modifies \c D. If a task modifies \c D, \c B will wait for all tasks which need the previous value of \c D, before invalidating the value of \c D. As a consequence, it releases the memory occupied by \c D. Whenever a task running on \c B needs the new value of \c D, allocation will take place again to receive it. Since tasks can be submitted dynamically, StarPU-MPI can not know whether the current value of data \c D will again be used by a newly-submitted task before being modified by another newly-submitted task, so until a task is submitted to modify the current value, it can not decide by itself whether to flush the cache or not. The application can however explicitly tell StarPU-MPI to flush the cache by calling starpu_mpi_cache_flush() or starpu_mpi_cache_flush_all_data(), for instance in case the data will not be used at all any more (see for instance the cholesky example in mpi/examples/matrix_decomposition), or at least not in the close future. If a newly-submitted task actually needs the value again, another transmission of \c D will be initiated from \c A to \c B. A mere starpu_mpi_cache_flush_all_data() can for instance be added at the end of the whole algorithm, to express that no data will be reused after this (or at least that it is not interesting to keep them in cache). It may however be interesting to add fine-graph starpu_mpi_cache_flush() calls during the algorithm; the effect for the data deallocation will be the same, but it will additionally release some pressure from the StarPU-MPI cache hash table during task submission. One can determine whether a piece of is cached with starpu_mpi_cached_receive() and starpu_mpi_cached_send(). The whole caching behavior can be disabled thanks to the \ref STARPU_MPI_CACHE environment variable. The variable \ref STARPU_MPI_CACHE_STATS can be set to 1 to enable the runtime to display messages when data are added or removed from the cache holding the received data. \section MPIMigration MPI Data Migration The application can dynamically change its mind about the data distribution, to balance the load over MPI nodes for instance. This can be done very simply by requesting an explicit move and then change the registered rank. For instance, we here switch to a new distribution function my_distrib2: we first register any data which wasn't registered already and will be needed, then migrate the data, and register the new location. \code{.c} for(x = 0; x < X; x++) { for (y = 0; y < Y; y++) { int mpi_rank = my_distrib2(x, y, size); if (!data_handles[x][y] && (mpi_rank == my_rank || my_rank == my_distrib(x+1, y, size) || my_rank == my_distrib(x-1, y, size) || my_rank == my_distrib(x, y+1, size) || my_rank == my_distrib(x, y-1, size))) /* Register newly-needed data */ starpu_variable_data_register(&data_handles[x][y], -1, (uintptr_t)NULL, sizeof(unsigned)); if (data_handles[x][y]) { /* Migrate the data */ starpu_mpi_data_migrate(MPI_COMM_WORLD, data_handles[x][y], mpi_rank); } } } \endcode From then on, further tasks submissions will use the new data distribution, which will thus change both MPI communications and task assignments. Very importantly, since all nodes have to agree on which node owns which data so as to determine MPI communications and task assignments the same way, all nodes have to perform the same data migration, and at the same point among task submissions. It thus does not require a strict synchronization, just a clear separation of task submissions before and after the data redistribution. Before data unregistration, it has to be migrated back to its original home node (the value, at least), since that is where the user-provided buffer resides. Otherwise the unregistration will complain that it does not have the latest value on the original home node. \code{.c} for(x = 0; x < X; x++) { for (y = 0; y < Y; y++) { if (data_handles[x][y]) { int mpi_rank = my_distrib(x, y, size); /* Get back data to original place where the user-provided buffer is. */ starpu_mpi_get_data_on_node_detached(MPI_COMM_WORLD, data_handles[x][y], mpi_rank, NULL, NULL); /* And unregister it */ starpu_data_unregister(data_handles[x][y]); } } } \endcode \section MPICollective MPI Collective Operations The functions are described in \ref MPICollectiveOperations. \code{.c} if (rank == root) { /* Allocate the vector */ vector = malloc(nblocks * sizeof(float *)); for(x=0 ; xstarpu_mpi_comm_matrix.py, this will produce 2 PDF files, one plot for the bandwidth, and one plot for the data volume. \image latex trace_bw_heatmap.pdf "Bandwidth Heatmap" width=0.5\textwidth \image html trace_bw_heatmap.png "Bandwidth Heatmap" \image latex trace_volume_heatmap.pdf "Data Volume Heatmap" width=0.5\textwidth \image html trace_volume_heatmap.png "Data Bandwidth Heatmap" \section MPIExamples More MPI examples MPI examples are available in the StarPU source code in mpi/examples:
  • comm shows how to use communicators with StarPU-MPI
  • complex is a simple example using a user-define data interface over MPI (complex numbers),
  • stencil5 is a simple stencil example using starpu_mpi_task_insert(),
  • matrix_decomposition is a cholesky decomposition example using starpu_mpi_task_insert(). The non-distributed version can check for
  • mpi_lu is an LU decomposition example, provided in three versions: plu_example uses explicit MPI data transfers, plu_implicit_example uses implicit MPI data transfers, plu_outofcore_example uses implicit MPI data transfers and supports data matrices which do not fit in memory (out-of-core).
\section MPIImplementation Notes about the Implementation StarPU-MPI is implemented directly on top of MPI. Since the release 1.3.0, an implementation on top of NewMadeleine, an optimizing communication library for high-performance networks, is also provided. To use it, one needs to install NewMadeleine (see http://pm2.gforge.inria.fr/newmadeleine/) and enable the \c configure option \ref enable-nmad "--enable-nmad". Both implementations provide the same public API. \section MPIMasterSlave MPI Master Slave Support StarPU provides an other way to execute applications across many nodes. The Master Slave support permits to use remote cores without thinking about data distribution. This support can be activated with the \c configure option \ref enable-mpi-master-slave "--enable-mpi-master-slave". However, you should not activate both MPI support and MPI Master-Slave support. The existing kernels for CPU devices can be used as such. They only have to be exposed through the name of the function in the \ref starpu_codelet::cpu_funcs_name field. Functions have to be globally-visible (i.e. not static) for StarPU to be able to look them up, and -rdynamic must be passed to gcc (or -export-dynamic to ld) so that symbols of the main program are visible. Optionally, you can choose the use of another function on slaves thanks to the field \ref starpu_codelet::mpi_ms_funcs. By default, one core is dedicated on the master node to manage the entire set of slaves. If the implementation of MPI you are using has a good multiple threads support, you can use the \c configure option \ref with-mpi-master-slave-multiple-thread "--with-mpi-master-slave-multiple-thread" to dedicate one core per slave. Choosing the number of cores on each slave device is done by setting the environment variable \ref STARPU_NMPIMSTHREADS "STARPU_NMPIMSTHREADS=\" with \ being the requested number of cores. By default all the slave's cores are used. Setting the number of slaves nodes is done by changing the -n parameter when executing the application with mpirun or mpiexec. The master node is by default the node with the MPI rank equal to 0. To select another node, use the environment variable \ref STARPU_MPI_MASTER_NODE "STARPU_MPI_MASTER_NODE=\" with \ being the requested MPI rank node. */