User:Szha/Notes/CMSC714/note0906

  1. notes
  2. first assignment MPI next week
  3. accounts emailed next week for UMIACS bug cluster and for SMP
  4. check readings page to see question sending assignment:w
  5. 2-4 questions
  6. 6PM day before lecture

PVM

provide a simple, free, portable parallel environment

run on everything

parallel hardware: SMP, MPPs, Vector machines
network of workstations: ATM, ethernet,
  • UNIX machines and PCs running win32 API
works on a heterogenous collection of machines
  • handles type conversion as needed

provides two things

message pasing library
  • point-to-point messages
  • synchronization: barriers, reductions
OS support
  • process creation (pvm_spawn)


PVM environment (UNIX)

one PVMD (daemon) per machine

all processes communicate through pvmd (by default)

any number of application processes per node

PVM message passing

all messages have tags

an integer to identify the message
defined by the user

messages are constructed, then sent

pvm_pk{int,char,float}(*var, count, stride)
pvm_unpk{int,char,float} to unpack

all processes are named based on task ids (tids)

local/remote processes are the same

primary message passing functions

pvm_send(tid,tag)
pvm_recv(tid,tag) # tid to receive from, could be anywhere


PVM process control

creating a process

pvm_spawn(task,argv,flag,where,ntask,tids)
task is name of program to start
flag and where provide control of where tasks are started
ntask determines how many copies are started
program must be installed on each target machine
returns number of tasks actually started

ending a task

pvm_exit
does not exit the process, just the PVM machine

info functions

pvm_mytid() get the process task id


PVM group operations

group is the unit of communication

a collection of one or more processes
processes join group with pvm_joingroup("<group name>")
each process in the group has a unique id
  • pvm_gettid("<group name>")

barrier

can involve a subset of the processes in the group
pvm_barrier("<group name>"), count)

reduction operations

pvm_reduce( void (*func)(), void *data, int count, int datatype, int msgtag, char *group, int rootinst)
  • result is returned to rootinst node
  • does not block (does not wait until root has the return value, just indicate valid buffer value)
pre-defined funcs: PvmMin, PvmMax, PvmSum, PvmProduct


PVM performance issues

messages have to go through PVMD

can use direct route option to prevent this problem

packing messages

semantics imply a copy (at least)
extra function call to pack messages

heterogenous support

information is sent in machine independent format
has a short circuit option for known homogenous comm.
  • passes data in native format then

sample PVM program

fragment from main

myGroupNum = pvm_joingroup("ping-pong");
mytid = pvm_mytid();
if (myGroupNum == 0) {
    pvm_catchout(stdout);
    okSpawn = pvm_spawn(MYNAME, argv, 0, "", 1, &friendTid);
    if (okSpawn != 1) {
        printf("can't spawn");
        pvm_exit();
        exit(1);
    }
} else {
    friendTid = pvm_parent();
    tids[0] = friendTid;
    tids[1] = mytid;
}
pvm_barrier("ping-pong", 2);

if (myGroupNum == 0) {
    for (i = 0; i < MESSAGESIZE; i++) {
        messsage[i] = '1'l
    }
}

for (i = 0; i<ITERATIONS; i++) {
    if( myGroupNum == 0) {
        pvm_initsend(PvmDataDefault);
        pvm_pkint(message,MESSAGESIZE, 1); // stride 1 indicates no gap
        pvm_send(friendTid, msgid);
        pvm_recv(friendTid, msgid);
        pvm_upkint(message,MESSAGESIZE,1);
    }
    else {
        pvm_recv(friendTid,msgid);
        pvm_upkint(message,MESSAGESIZE, 1);
        pvm_initsend(PvmDataDefault);
        pvm_pkint(message, MESSAGESIZE, 1);
        pvm_send(friendTid,msgid);
    }
}
pvm_exit();
exit(0);