[Beowulf] How to justify the use MPI codes on multicore systems/PCs?

[Douglas Eadline]

Your question seems based on the assumption that shared memory
is always better than message passing on shared memory systems.
Though this seems like a safe assumption, it may  not be true
in all cases:

  http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7884/

of course it all depends on the compiler, the application, the hardware, ....

--
Doug Eadline


> Hello All,
>
> I developed my MPI based parallel code for clusters, but now I use it on
> multicore/manycore computers (PCs) as well. How to justify (in some
> thesis/publication) the use of a distributed memory code (in MPI) on a
> shared memory (multicore) machine. I guess to explain two reasons:
>
> (1) Plan is to use several hunderds processes in future. So MPI like stuff
> is necessary. To maintain code uniformity and save cost/time for
> developing
> shared memory solution (using OpenMP, pthreads etc), I use the same MPI
> code on shared memory systems (like multicore PCs). MPI based codes give
> reasonable performance on multicore PCs, if not the best.
>
> (2) The latest MPI implementations are intelligent enough that they use
> some efficient mechanism while executing MPI based codes on shared memory
> (multicore) machines.  (please tell me any reference to quote this fact).
>
>
> Please help me in formally justifying this and comment/modify above two
> justifications. Better if I you can suggent me to quote some reference of
> any suitable publication in this regard.
>
> best regards,
> Amjad Ali
>
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-- 
Doug

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