As far as I can see, Jeff's analysis is dead on. The matching order at P2
is based on the order in which the envelopes from P0 and P1 show up at P2.
The Barrier does not force an order between the communication paths P0->P2
vs. P1->P2.
The MPI standard does not even say what "show up" means unless there is a
single source. Say P0->P2 and P1->P2 are different kinds of links and the
MPI progress engine services link types round robin.
The standard does say that if there are 2 sends from p0 to p2 and two
receives at P2 that could match either send, the matching order at P2 must
be the same as the issue order.at P0.
Dick
Dick Treumann - MPI Team
IBM Systems & Technology Group
Dept X2ZA / MS P963 -- 2455 South Road -- Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
Tele (845) 433-7846 Fax (845) 433-8363
users-boun...@open-mpi.org wrote on 08/24/2009 03:40:15 PM:
> [image removed]
>
> Re: [OMPI users] Anyscientific application heavily using MPI_Barrier?
>
> Jeff Squyres
>
> to:
>
> Open MPI Users
>
> 08/24/2009 03:41 PM
>
> Sent by:
>
> users-boun...@open-mpi.org
>
> Please respond to Open MPI Users
>
> On Aug 24, 2009, at 1:03 PM, Eugene Loh wrote:
>
> > E.g., let's say P0 and P1 each send a message to P2, both using the
> > same tag and communicator. Let's say P2 does two receives on that
> > communicator and tag, using a wildcard source. So, the messages
> > could be received in either order. One could introduce barriers to
> > order the messages. E.g.,
> >
> > P0:
> > Send
> > Barrier
> > P1:
> > Barrier
> > Send
> > P2:
> > Recv
> > Barrier
> > Recv
>
>
> Is this behavior *guaranteed* by MPI? I'm not actually sure that it
> is; barrier does not provide any guarantees about point-to-point
> message passing progress.
>
> For example, how about a machine with these assumptions:
>
> - P0 is "far away" from P2 on the point-to-point network
> - P1 is "close by" to P2 on the point-to-point network
> - Barriers go across a separate/fast network (think: bluegene)
> - P0's send message is short/eager
>
> In this case, the Send from P0 complete "immediately" and enter the
> barrier before it is delivered to P2. The P0 send could then take a
> "long time" to get to P2 -- potentially long enough for the barrier to
> overtake it and for the Send from P1 to be delivered to P2 before the
> Send from P0 arrives at P2.
>
> Couldn't that happen?
>
> Granted, I would expect that your example would perform in most real-
> world situations as you describe (P0 is delivered to P2, then P1 is
> delivered to P2). But I don't think the standard guarantees it.
>
> --
> Jeff Squyres
> jsquy...@cisco.com
>
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