Hi, I recently started on an MPI-based, 'real-time', pipelined-processing application, and the application fails due to large time-jitter in sending and receiving messages. Here are related info - 1) Platform: a) Intel Box: Two Hex-core, Intel Xeon, 2.668 GHz (...total of 12 cores), b) OS: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86_64) - Kernel \r (\l) c) MPI Rev: (OpenRTE) 1.4, (...Installed OFED package) d) HCA: InfiniBand: Mellanox Technologies MT26428 [ConnectX IB QDR, PCIe 2.0 5GT/s] (rev a0) 2) Application detail a) Launching 7 processes, for pipelined processing, where each process waits for a message (sizes vary between 1 KBytes to 26 KBytes), then process the data, and outputs a message (sizes vary between 1 KBytes to 26 KBytes), to next process. b) MPI transport functions used : "MPI_Isend", MPI_Irecv, MPI_Test. i) For Receiving messages, I first make an MPI_Irecv call, followed by a busy-loop on MPI_Test, waiting for message ii) For Sending message, there is a busy-loop on MPI_Test to ensure prior buffer was sent, then use MPI_Isend. c) When the job starts, all these 7 process are put in High priority mode ( SCHED_FIFO policy, with priority setting of 99). The Job entails an input data packet stream (and a series of MPI messages), continually at 40 micro-sec rate, for a few minutes.
3) The Problem: Most calls to MPI_Test (...which is non-blocking) takes a few micro-sec, but around 10% of the job, it has a large jitter, that vary from 1 to 100 odd millisec. This causes some of the application input queues to fill-up and cause a failure. Any suggestions to look at on the MPI settings or OS config/issues will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. Sanji
