[Mpi3-tools] draft MPIT hierarchy query function text

Sun Mar 7 16:12:50 CST 2010

Shouldn't it be MPIT_TAXO or MPIT_TAXON?

On Sun, 7 Mar 2010, Martin Schulz wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> On Mar 5, 2010, at 10:20 AM, William Gropp wrote:
>
> > I'm in favor of this approach - the text based interface is most
> > useful to end users, not to the tool middleware that is most likely
> > to need this functionality.
>
> I agree, the general idea that you have brought up to replace the
> string description
> with a more explicit set of functions to query is certainly good and I
> think we should
> go with it.
>
> As for the concrete functions - your proposal basically turns the
> existing structure
> around and decouples it from the actual performance variables; it
> becomes a
> separate aspect of the interface and a tool writer would have to query
> all of this
> separately. I am not sure, yet, what this really means for new tools
> and how much
> more complicated this would make it. The interface would, however, be
> much
> cleaner, which IMHO makes up for some extra work that has to be put
> into using it.
>
> A few questions/comments (not just for Dave):
> - MPI_TAXA is find with me, CLASSIFICATION is probably a bit too long,
> and there
> was opposition at the Atlanta meeting against using group due the name
> clash
> with MPI groups.
> - Isn't the ALL_SETS redundant? We could just have a global set
> (MPI_SETWORLD)
> and could use that to iterate over all sets.
> - Returning all sets in a query operation might be a bit confusing and
> make it
> difficult to extract the full hierarchy information. Should we just
> include the next
> level down in the hierarchy tree? Same for querying up starting at the
> variables? For sets this could also be a routine to get the parent
> node, which
> wouldn't need an iterator.
> - General, representing this as a forest of trees and variable can be
> a leaf
> of any number of trees might be easier to understand than an arbitrary
> DAG.
> - All sets are identified by character strings, which is the most
> natural, but could
> also be cumbersome for repeated queries and the representation of the
> variable
> hierarchy in a tree. It might be easier to represent sets with numbers
> or other
> identifiers at some sort and at the end just provide one function that
> extracts
> the name and description that a tool can call on demand when it actually
> prints any of the text.
> - When I originally thought about this, I wanted to overlay an
> additional structure
> over the set functionality that indicates an second, independent
> neighbor or
> before/after relationship. The idea is to allow tools to understand
> the order
> of events in the MPI implementation, e.g., if you have two timers that
> are
> used during a receive, this could tell you which one is used before
> the  other.
> Also, it would allow the interface to express full event chains, as
> they were
> prescribed in PERUSE, but without demanding them. In the original
> string-based
> interface, this would have been too complicated, but here we could just
> get another function that allows us to query preceding and subsequent
> events. Would this be useful?
> - For all iterators we need "has changed" functiosns to see if
> something has
> changed, e.g., by activating new variables.
> - Since this is a new and independent functions, should we also open
> this uo
> to coinfiguration variables?
>
> Martin
>
>
>
> >
> > Bill
> >
> > On Mar 5, 2010, at 11:07 AM, Dave Goodell wrote:
> >
> >> Feedback on this proposal would be appreciated.  Should I proceed or
> >> will I be wasting my time?
> >>
> >> -Dave
> >>
> >> On Mar 2, 2010, at 6:09 PM, Dave Goodell wrote:
> >>
> >>> Enclosed is alternative text for the MPIT draft.  This text replaces
> >>> the "Set and Hierarchy Information" \subsubsection in 1.3.5 in the
> >>> current draft PDF (md5sum: 4fa7d0f3a25cabce8c2f5ef95bb41599).  My
> >>> motivation for this alternative interface is to avoid pushing the
> >>> burden of text parsing onto all tools that which to utilize
> >>> hierarchy information.  As I mentioned at the last concall, I
> >>> believe that few or no tools will want to work with the text format
> >>> directly and will instead always access this information through a
> >>> functional interface.
> >>>
> >>> The text below has many "...MORE TEXT HERE..." points indicating
> >>> where the text should be expanded in a fashion consistent with the
> >>> rest of the MPIT text.  I'm happy to finish writing this text but I
> >>> wanted to get the rough shape of the proposal out for comment before
> >>> I take the time to fill in the non-essential details.  If I've
> >>> omitted too much in a particular area, please ask and I'll clarify
> >>> what I had in mind.
> >>>
> >>> Discussion items:
> >>>
> >>> * function names: did we decide that iterative functions should be
> >>> named _ITER or similar?
> >>> * function names: most of these are listed as starting with
> >>> MPIT_TAXA (as in taxonomy) in order to avoid verb/noun confusion
> >>> with the word "SET".  I am open to alternative names, such as
> >>> MPIT_TAXONOMY, MPIT_HIERARCHY, MPIT_CLASSIFICATION, MPIT_GROUP.
> >>> (the first three are long, the last has potential for confusion with
> >>> MPI_Group)  Maybe MPIT_VARGROUP?
> >>> * iteration order: does the topological order requirement help
> >>> client code or is it just additional burden for MPI implementors?
> >>> * I've eliminated the "pretty names" for sets.  I'm assuming that
> >>> the uniquely identifying name is sufficient and that anything that
> >>> needs to be spelled out more explicitly for humans should go into
> >>> the description information.  If anyone disagrees with this, I can
> >>> add the pretty names back in.
> >>> * I think it also makes sense to move the rewritten \subsubsection
> >>> to after the "Query and Handle Functions" \subsubsection.  It is
> >>> easier to talk about grouping performance variables once the reader
> >>> knows a bit more about what performance variables actually are.
> >>>
> >>> -Dave
> >>>
> >>> ------8<------
> >>> Performance Variable Taxonomic Information
> >>>
> >>> MPI implementations can optionally provide information that
> >>> describes the relationship of performance variables to each other.
> >>> For this, an MPI implementation can define names that represent sets
> >>> of variables and then associate each performance variable with zero
> >>> or more sets.  Sets may contain zero or more performance variables
> >>> and zero or more other sets.  Sets may not contain themselves either
> >>> directly or indirectly.  Said another way, these sets and
> >>> performance variables form a directed acyclic graph (DAG).  This
> >>> information is accessible via several interrogative routines.
> >>>
> >>> MPIT_TAXA_QUERY_ALL_SETS(iterator, name, namelen)
> >>>
> >>> INOUT iterator
> >>> OUT   name
> >>> OUT   namelen
> >>>
> >>> Iterate over all sets in topological order.  A unique identifying
> >>> name for the set is returned in "name" and "namelen" is set to the
> >>> number of characters written.  The value of "namelen" cannot be
> >>> larger than MPIT_MAX_SET_NAME-1.
> >>> ...MORE TEXT HERE...
> >>>
> >>> MPIT_TAXA_QUERY_VARIABLE_SETS(iterator, varname, name, namelen)
> >>>
> >>> INOUT iterator
> >>> IN    varname
> >>> OUT   name
> >>> OUT   namelen
> >>>
> >>> Iterate over all sets that contain the performance variable
> >>> identified by "varname".
> >>> ...MORE TEXT HERE...
> >>>
> >>> MPIT_TAXA_QUERY_SET_SETS(iterator, setname, name, namelen)
> >>>
> >>> INOUT iterator
> >>> IN    setname
> >>> OUT   name
> >>> OUT   namelen
> >>>
> >>> Iterate over all sets that contained in the set identified by
> >>> "setname".
> >>> ...MORE TEXT HERE...
> >>>
> >>> MPIT_TAXA_QUERY_SET_VARIABLES(iterator, setname, name, namelen)
> >>>
> >>> Iterate over all variables contained in the set identified by
> >>> "setname".
> >>> ...MORE TEXT HERE...
> >>>
> >>> MPIT_TAXA_SET_DESCRIBE(name, desc, desclen)
> >>>
> >>> IN    name
> >>> OUT   desc
> >>> OUT   desclen
> >>>
> >>> Retrieve the description for the set identified by "name".
> >>> ...MORE TEXT HERE...
> >>> ------8<------
> >>>
> >>> Also, delete the "sets" and "setslen" parameters to
> >>> MPIT_PERFORMANCE_INFO.  Delete the paragraphs contained in lines
> >>> 7-16 of page 19 ("The argument sets ... setslen must be set to
> >>> zero.").
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>> Mpi3-tools at lists.mpi-forum.org
> >>> http://**lists.mpi-forum.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/mpi3-tools
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
> > William Gropp
> > Deputy Director for Research
> > Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies
> > Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science
> > University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Mpi3-tools at lists.mpi-forum.org
> > http://**lists.mpi-forum.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/mpi3-tools
> >
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Martin Schulz, schulzm at llnl.gov, http://*people.llnl.gov/schulzm
> CASC @ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, USA
>
>
>
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