Implementing MPI-IO atomic mode without file system support

Robert Ross, Robert Latham, William D Gropp, Rajeev Thakur, Brian Toonen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The ROMIO implementation of the MPI-IO standard provides a portable infrastructure for use on top of any number of different underlying storage targets. These different targets vary widely in their capabilities, and in some cases, additional effort is needed within ROMIO to support the complete MPI-IO semantics. One aspect of the interface that can be problematic to implement is the MPI-IO atomic mode. This mode requires enforcing strict consistency semantics. For some file systems, native locks may be used to enforce these semantics, but not all file systems have lock support. In this work, we describe two algorithms for implementing efficient mutex locks using MPI-1 and MPI-2 capabilities. We then show how these algorithms may be used to implement a portable MPI-IO atomic mode for ROMIO. We evaluate the performance of these algorithms and show that they impose little additional overhead on the system. Because of the low-overhead nature of these algorithms, they are likely useful in a variety of situations where distributed locks are needed in the MPI-2 environment.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2005 IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, CCGrid 2005
Pages1135-1142
Number of pages8
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005
Externally publishedYes
Event2005 IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, CCGrid 2005 - Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
Duration: May 9 2005May 12 2005

Publication series

Name2005 IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, CCGrid 2005
Volume2

Other

Other2005 IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, CCGrid 2005
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityCardiff, Wales
Period5/9/055/12/05

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Engineering

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