Assume your data is discontiguous in memory and making it contiguous is
not practical (e.g. there is no way to make cells of a row and cells of a
column both contiguous.) You have 3 options:
1) Use many small/contiguous messages
2) Allocate scratch space and pack/unpack
3) Use a derived datatype.
If you decide to use option 2 then the time your program spends in the
allocate/pack/send/free and the time it spends in allocate/recv/unpack/free
needs to be counted in the cost. Just comparing a contiguous vs
discontiguous message time does not help make a good decision.
Whether 2 or 3 is faster depends a lot in how the MPI implementation does
its datatype processing. If the MPI implementation can move data directly
from discontiguous memory into the sends side adapter and from recv side
adapter to discontiguous memory, Datatypes may be faster and will conserve
memory. If the MPI implementation just mallocs a scratch buffer and uses
the datatype to guide an internal pack/unpack subroutine, there is a pretty
good chance your hand crafted pack or unpack, along with contiguous
messaging will be more efficient.
I mention option 1 for completeness and because if there were a very good
put/get available, it might even be the best choice. It is probably not
the best choice in any current MPI but there may be exceptions.
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
|------------>
| From: |
|------------>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Terry Frankcombe <te...@chem.gu.se>
|
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|------------>
| To: |
|------------>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Open MPI Users <us...@open-mpi.org>
|
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|------------>
| Date: |
|------------>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|05/06/2010 12:25 AM
|
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|------------>
| Subject: |
|------------>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Re: [OMPI users] Fortran derived types
|
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|------------>
| Sent by: |
|------------>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|users-boun...@open-mpi.org
|
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Hi Derek
On Wed, 2010-05-05 at 13:05 -0400, Cole, Derek E wrote:
> In general, even in your serial fortran code, you're already taking a
> performance hit using a derived type.
Do you have any numbers to back that up?
Ciao
Terry
_______________________________________________
users mailing list
us...@open-mpi.org
http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/users
