Guys - Thank You for your replies!
(wow : that was a rhyme! :) )
I checked my structure with the offsetof macro on my laptop at home
and found the following offsets:
offs iSpeciesID: 0
offs sCapacityFile: 2
offs adGParams: 68
total size 100
so there seems to be a 2 byte gap before the double array;
and this machine seems to prefer multiples of 4.
But is this alignment problem not also a danger for heterogeneous clusters
using OpenMPI?
I guess the only portable solution is to forget about MPI Data types and
somehow pack or serialize the data before sending and unpack/deserialize
after receiving it.
Jody
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 6:18 PM, Gus Correa <g...@ldeo.columbia.edu> wrote:
> jody wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> I have noticed on my machine that a struct which i have defined as
>>
>> typedef struct {
>> short iSpeciesID;
>> char sCapacityFile[SHORT_INPUT];
>> double adGParams[NUM_GPARAMS];
>> } tVStruct;
>>
>> (where SHORT_INPUT=64 and NUM_GPARAMS=4)
>>
>> has size 104 (instead of 98) whereas the corresponding MPI Datatype i
>> created
>>
>> int aiLengthsT5[3] = {1, SHORT_INPUT, NUM_GPARAMS};
>> MPI_Aint aiDispsT5[3] = {0, iShortSize, iShortSize+SHORT_INPUT};
>> MPI_Datatype aTypesT5[3] = {MPI_UNSIGNED_SHORT, MPI_CHAR, MPI_DOUBLE};
>> MPI_Type_create_struct(3, aiLengthsT5, aiDispsT5, aTypesT5,
>> &m_dtVegetationData3);
>> MPI_Type_commit(&m_dtVegetationData3);
>>
>> only has length 98 (as expected). The size differences resulted in an
>> error when doing
>>
>> tVegetationData3 VD;
>> MPI_Send(&VD, 1, m_dtVegetationData3, 1, TAG_STEP_CMD, MPI_COMM_WORLD);
>>
>> and the corresponding
>>
>> tVegetationData3 VD;
>> MPI_Recv(&VD, 1, m_dtVegetationData3, MPI_ANY_SOURCE,
>> TAG_STEP_CMD, MPI_COMM_WORLD, &st);
>>
>> (in fact, the last double in my array was not transmitted correctly)
>>
>> It seems that on my machine the struct was padded to a multiple of 8.
>> By manually adding some padding bytes to my MPI Datatype in order
>> to fill it up to the next multiple of 8 i could work around this problem.
>> (not very nice, and very probably not portable)
>>
>>
>> My question: is there a way to tell MPI to automatically use the
>> required padding?
>>
>>
>> Thank You
>> Jody
>> _______________________________________________
>> users mailing list
>> us...@open-mpi.org
>> http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/users
>
>
> Hi Jody
>
> My naive guesses:
>
> I think when you create the MPI structure you can pass the
> byte displacement of each structure component.
> You would need to modify your aiDispsT5[3], to match the
> actual memory alignment, I guess.
> Yes, indeed portability may be sacrificed.
>
> There is some clarification in "MPI, The Complete Reference, Vol 1,
> 2nd Ed, Marc Snir et al.".
> Section 3.2 and 3.3 (general on type map & type signature).
> Section 3.4.8 MPI_Type_create_struct (examples, specially 3.13).
> Section 3.10, on portability, doesn't seem to guarantee portability of
> MPI_Type_Struct.
>
> I hope this helps,
> Gus Correa
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list
> us...@open-mpi.org
> http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/users
>
