Next Generation MPI Programming: Advanced MPI-2 and New Features in MPI-3

Presenters

  Pavan Balaji, Argonne National Laboratory
  Torsten Hoefler, ETH Zürich

Host

Abstract

The Message Passing Interface (MPI) has been the de facto standard for parallel programming for nearly two decades now. However, a vast majority of applications only rely on basic MPI-1 features without taking advantage of the rich set of functionality the rest of the standard provides. Further, with the advent of MPI-3 (released in September 2012), a vast number of new features are being introduced in MPI, including efficient one-sided communication, support for external tools, non-blocking collective operations, and improved support for topology-aware data movement. The upcoming MPI-4 standard aims at introducing further improvements to the standard in a number of aspects. This is an advanced-level tutorial that will provide an overview of various powerful features in MPI, especially with MPI-2 and MPI-3, and will present a brief preview into what is being planned for MPI-4.

Detailed Description

This tutorial will introduce advanced MPI-2.2 and new MPI-3.0 functions and concepts. We will demonstrate use-cases and examples for the discussed concepts. New concepts such as nonblocking or neighborhood collective communication are intended to raise the level of abstraction to allow the user to specify ``what is done'' and not ``how it is done'' of his algorithms to the library which can then optimize to the particular target architecture. Existing concepts, such as MPI datatypes can often be used to improve application performance and programmer productivity.

The attendees will understand how the concepts are intended to function and under which circumstances the functions should be used or when they should not be used. We will also discuss MPI algorithms for advanced communication problems.

The new MPI-3.0 standard will introduce new interfaces to query and manipulate both configuration and performance data through the newly defined MPI tool information interface. We will provide a first look at its capabilities and provide a series of use cases for usage both inside of applications as well as tools.

Additionally, MPI-3 includes s series of small updates, changes and additions, which we will summarize for the attendees along with a description of their impact and consequences for application developers. We intend for this section to raise awareness for minor features often overshadowed by the major updates, but still provide powerful additions for the optimization or efficient design of MPI codes. We will further briefly discuss open proposals for future MPI versions as well as the process that's behind the standardization of MPI.

Industry (ISVs), academics, researchers, developers

50% Intermediate + 50% Advanced

We assume that people are familiar with MPI basics and that they have used MPI before. However, several new features target the intermediate level while others will be more advanced.

Familiarity with C (or Fortran). Some familiarity with MPI (used it before and understand basic concepts). Basic concepts of distributed memory parallel programming.

Slides: hoefler-balaji-isc16-advanced-mpi.pdf - (5934.49 kb)