[Mpi-forum] use of communicator in MPI_Pack and MPI_Unpack

[Thakur, Rajeev]

You can use MPI_COMM_WORLD as the communicator. If you are running on a homogeneous system, there shouldn’t be any performance issue in using MPI_COMM_WORLD as the communicator either.

Rajeev

> On Feb 17, 2016, at 6:09 PM, Michael Rezny <michael.rezny at monash.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I have a question regarding the use of a communicator in MPI_Pack and MPI_Unpack.
> I have googled and search the MPI mailing lists but haven't found an answer.
> 
> The OpenMPI man page for MPI_Pack states:
>        The comm argument is the  communicator  that  will  be
>        subsequently used for sending the packed message.
> 
> And something similar for MPI_Unpack.
> 
> Which seems to reflect what is defined in the MPI standards.
> 
> Basically, what I would like to do is to have an MPI rank as a coupler.
> That is, receiving a packed message from one application and
> passing it to another application.
> 
> Comm_A would be the ranks of application A plus the coupler and
> Comm_B would be the ranks of application B plus the coupler.
> 
> In this case, MPI_COMM_WORLD = Comm_A U Comm_B.
> 
> I would like to have a solution that does not have the coupler unpacking
> the buffer received from application A and then packing it to send it to application B
> 
> I just found a very nice explanation of the need for a communicator in Pack / Unpack on page 135 of Using MPI Portable Parallel Programming with the Message-Passing Interface
> second edition by Gropp, Lusk, and Skjellum.
> 
> If I understand this correctly, it would be legal to use MPI_COMM_WORLD as the communicator
> for MPI_Pack and MPI_Unpack. The only downside is that one might not get the optimal performance.
> 
> The alternative we are using is to use MPI_Pack_external and MPI_Unpack_external
> which requires no communicator. But the downside is that on homogeneous little-endian HPCs,
> this will always entail byte swapping on packing and unpacking.
> 
> So my question is: What is the correct and optimal way to implement passing packed messages
> in the coupling example described above?
> 
> kindest regards
> Mike
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