The only MPI calls I am using are these (grep-ed from my code):

MPI_Abort(MPI_COMM_WORLD, 1);
MPI_Barrier(MPI_COMM_WORLD);
MPI_Bcast(&bufarray[0].hdr, sizeof(BD_CHDR), MPI_CHAR, 0, MPI_COMM_WORLD);
MPI_Comm_rank(MPI_COMM_WORLD,&myid);
MPI_Comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD,&numprocs); 
MPI_Finalize();
MPI_Init(&argc, &argv);
MPI_Irecv(
MPI_Isend(
MPI_Recv(buff, BUFSIZE, MPI_CHAR, 0, TAG, MPI_COMM_WORLD, &stat);
MPI_Send(buff, BUFSIZE, MPI_CHAR, 0, TAG, MPI_COMM_WORLD);
MPI_Test(&request, &complete, &status);
MPI_Wait(&request, &status);  

The big wait happens on receipt of a bcast call that would otherwise work.
Its a bit mysterious really...

I presume that bcast is implemented with multicast calls but does it use any 
actual broadcast calls at all?  
I know I'm scraping the edges here looking for something but I just cant get my 
head around why it should fail where it has.

--- On Mon, 9/8/10, Ralph Castain <r...@open-mpi.org> wrote:

From: Ralph Castain <r...@open-mpi.org>
Subject: Re: [OMPI users] MPI_Bcast issue
To: "Open MPI Users" <us...@open-mpi.org>
Received: Monday, 9 August, 2010, 1:32 PM

Hi Randolph
Unless your code is doing a connect/accept between the copies, there is no way 
they can cross-communicate. As you note, mpirun instances are completely 
isolated from each other - no process in one instance can possibly receive 
information from a process in another instance because it lacks all knowledge 
of it -unless- they wireup into a greater communicator by performing 
connect/accept calls between them.
I suspect you are inadvertently doing just that - perhaps by doing 
connect/accept in a tree-like manner, not realizing that the end result is one 
giant communicator that now links together all the N servers.
Otherwise, there is no possible way an MPI_Bcast in one mpirun can collide or 
otherwise communicate with an MPI_Bcast between processes started by another 
mpirun.


On Aug 8, 2010, at 7:13 PM, Randolph Pullen wrote:
Thanks,  although “An intercommunicator cannot be used for collective 
communication.” i.e ,  bcast calls., I can see how the MPI_Group_xx calls can 
be used to produce a useful group and then communicator;  - thanks again but 
this is really the side issue to my main question about MPI_Bcast.

I seem to have duplicate concurrent processes interfering with each other.  
This would appear to be a breach of the MPI safety dictum, ie MPI_COMM_WORD is 
supposed to only include the processes started by a single mpirun command and 
isolate these processes from other similar groups of processes safely.

So, it would appear to be a bug.  If so this has significant implications for 
environments such as mine, where it may often occur that the same program is 
run by different users simultaneously.  

It is really this issue
 that it concerning me, I can rewrite the code but if it can crash when 2 
copies run at the same time, I have a much bigger problem.

My suspicion is that a within the MPI_Bcast handshaking, a syncronising 
broadcast call may be colliding across the environments.  My only evidence is 
an otherwise working program waits on broadcast reception forever when two or 
more copies are run at [exactly] the same time.

Has anyone else seen similar behavior in concurrently running programs that 
perform lots of broadcasts perhaps?

Randolph


--- On Sun, 8/8/10, David Zhang <solarbik...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: David Zhang <solarbik...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [OMPI users] MPI_Bcast issue
To: "Open MPI Users" <us...@open-mpi.org>
Received: Sunday, 8 August, 2010, 12:34 PM

In particular, intercommunicators

On 8/7/10, Aurélien Bouteiller <boute...@eecs.utk.edu> wrote:
> You should consider reading about communicators in MPI.
>
> Aurelien
> --
> Aurelien Bouteiller, Ph.D.
> Innovative Computing Laboratory, The University of Tennessee.
>
> Envoyé de mon iPad
>
> Le Aug 7, 2010 à 1:05, Randolph Pullen <randolph_pul...@yahoo.com.au> a
> écrit :
>
>> I seem to be having a problem with MPI_Bcast.
>> My massive I/O intensive data movement program must broadcast from n to n
>> nodes. My problem starts because I require 2 processes per node, a sender
>> and a receiver and I have implemented
 these using MPI processes rather
>> than tackle the complexities of threads on MPI.
>>
>> Consequently, broadcast and calls like alltoall are not completely
>> helpful.  The dataset is huge and each node must end up with a complete
>> copy built by the large number of contributing broadcasts from the sending
>> nodes.  Network efficiency and run time are paramount.
>>
>> As I don’t want to needlessly broadcast all this data to the sending nodes
>> and I have a perfectly good MPI program that distributes globally from a
>> single node (1 to N), I took the unusual decision to start N copies of
>> this program by spawning the MPI system from the PVM system in an effort
>> to get my N to N concurrent transfers.
>>
>> It seems that the broadcasts running on concurrent MPI environments
>> collide and cause all but
 the first process to hang waiting for their
>> broadcasts.  This theory seems to be confirmed by introducing a sleep of
>> n-1 seconds before the first MPI_Bcast  call on each node, which results
>> in the code working perfectly.  (total run time 55 seconds, 3 nodes,
>> standard TCP stack)
>>
>> My guess is that unlike PVM, OpenMPI implements broadcasts with broadcasts
>> rather than multicasts.  Can someone confirm this?  Is this a bug?
>>
>> Is there any multicast or N to N broadcast where sender processes can
>> avoid participating when they don’t need to?
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>> Randolph
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> users mailing list
>> us...@open-mpi.org
>> http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/users
>

-- 
Sent from my mobile device

David Zhang
University of California, San Diego

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