[gmx-developers] Disabling Pthreads

Berk Hess hess at kth.se
Wed Nov 11 08:47:38 CET 2020


Hi,

Then there is a strange bug somewhere.

Are you using real MPI or thread-MPI. Do you know where this happens? 
Are you running with OpenMP support?

Cheers,

Berk

On 2020-11-11 08:26, Gilles Gouaillardet wrote:
> Berk,
>
>
> There is a total of 52 cores, and my observation is that each MPI task 
> does spawn 52 threads.
>
> So the worst case scenario is 48 MPI tasks each spawning 52 threads, 
> so a total of 48 * 52 threads on a single node
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Gilles
>
> On 11/11/2020 4:23 PM, Berk Hess wrote:
>> On 2020-11-11 03:37, Gilles Gouaillardet wrote:
>>> Erik and all,
>>>
>>>
>>> I am kind of facing the exact opposite issue on an other ARM processor:
>>>
>>> High end A64fx (Fugaku/FX1000) have 48 cores plus 2 or 4 assistant 
>>> cores.
>>>
>>> A job is put in a cgroup of 48 cores (e.g. no assistant cores)
>>>
>>> Worst case scenario, a flat mpi run (48 tasks) will spawn 48 * 52 
>>> cores to spin up all the cores.
>> What do you mean with 48 * 52 cores? There are only 52 cores. Gromacs 
>> will by default not spawn more threads in total then there are cores. 
>> If you ask for 48 MPI ranks with a real MPI library Gromacs will not 
>> spawn any additional threads. With thread-mpi it will spawn 48 or 52 
>> total.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Berk
>>>
>>> 1) GROMACS is not cgroup aware and hence consider there are 52 (or 
>>> 50) cores per node (this is a very minor issue)
>>>
>>> 2) spawning such a high number of threads caused some crashes (weird 
>>> stack traces, I did not spend much time investigating)
>>>
>>> 3) in the case of A64fx, all cores are up and running, ready to 
>>> crunch, and do not require any special tricks.
>>>
>>>
>>> At this stage, I think the easiest path to address this on A64fx is 
>>> to add yet an other cmake option to
>>>
>>> unconditionally skip the spin up phase.
>>>
>>> This could be improved by adding a command line option, or an 
>>> environment variable, to change the default behavior
>>>
>>> (default behavior should be a cmake option imho)
>>>
>>>
>>> Any thoughts on how to best move forward?
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>>
>>> Gilles
>>>
>>> On 11/11/2020 6:08 AM, Erik Lindahl wrote:
>>>> We might be able to work around the last aspect, but it will likely 
>>>> take a couple of weeks until I can lay hands on a new ARM-based 
>>>> Macbook.
>>>>
>>>> Long story made short: The advanced power-saving features on ARM 
>>>> mean some cores are not visible until they are used, so we created 
>>>> a small hack where we "spin up" the CPU by exercising all cores.
>>>>
>>>> We might anyway need to do something different with the new type of 
>>>> big.LITTLE cores where we have 4+4 or 8+4 cores, but I can't even 
>>>> start to work on that until I have suitable hardware. The good news 
>>>> is that such hardware was announced a couple of hours ago, with 
>>>> availability next week ;-)
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Erik
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 9:45 PM Mark Abraham 
>>>> <mark.j.abraham at gmail.com <mailto:mark.j.abraham at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     No, the use of std::thread in eg hardware detection also requires
>>>>     a lower level threading implementation.
>>>>
>>>>     Mark
>>>>
>>>>     On Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 20:41 Berk Hess <hess at kth.se
>>>>     <mailto:hess at kth.se>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         Hi,
>>>>
>>>>         Turning off GMX_THREAD_MPI in cmake should remove the
>>>>         dependency on pthreads.
>>>>
>>>>         Cheers,
>>>>
>>>>         Berk
>>>>
>>>>         On 2020-11-10 18:06, Guido Giuntoli wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>         Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>>         Is there any way to disable the “Pthreads” dependency during
>>>>>         the configuration/compilation of GROMACS?
>>>>>
>>>>>         *Best regards | Mit freundlichen Grüßen*
>>>>>
>>>>>         **
>>>>>
>>>>>         *Guido Giuntoli***
>>>>>
>>>>>         **
>>>>>
>>>>>         HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES Duesseldorf GmbH
>>>>>         Hansaallee 205, 40549 Dusseldorf, Germany, *www.huawei.com*
>>>>>         <http://www.huawei.com/>
>>>>>         Registered Office: Düsseldorf, Register Court Düsseldorf, HRB
>>>>>         56063,
>>>>>         Managing Director: Li Peng, Li Jian, Shi Yanli**
>>>>>
>>>>>         Sitz der Gesellschaft: Düsseldorf, Amtsgericht Düsseldorf,
>>>>>         HRB 56063,
>>>>>         Geschäftsführer: Li Peng, Li Jian, Shi Yanli
>>>>>
>>>>> *-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* 
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>         *This e-mail and its attachments contain confidential
>>>>>         information from HUAWEI, which is intended only for the
>>>>>         person or entity whose address is listed above. Any use of
>>>>>         the information contained herein in any way (including, but
>>>>>         not limited to, total or partial disclosure, reproduction, or
>>>>>         dissemination) by persons other than the intended
>>>>>         recipient(s) is prohibited. If you receive this e-mail in
>>>>>         error, please notify the sender by phone or email immediately
>>>>>         and delete it!*
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         --         Gromacs Developers mailing list
>>>>
>>>>         * Please search the archive at
>>>> http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-developers_List
>>>> <http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-developers_List>
>>>>         before posting!
>>>>
>>>>         * Can't post? Read
>>>>         http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists
>>>>         <http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists>
>>>>
>>>>         * For (un)subscribe requests visit
>>>> https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-developers 
>>>>
>>>> <https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-developers> 
>>>>
>>>>         or send a mail to gmx-developers-request at gromacs.org
>>>>         <mailto:gmx-developers-request at gromacs.org>.
>>>>
>>>>     --     Gromacs Developers mailing list
>>>>
>>>>     * Please search the archive at
>>>> http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-developers_List
>>>> <http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-developers_List>
>>>>     before posting!
>>>>
>>>>     * Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists
>>>>     <http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists>
>>>>
>>>>     * For (un)subscribe requests visit
>>>> https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-developers 
>>>>
>>>> <https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-developers> 
>>>>
>>>>     or send a mail to gmx-developers-request at gromacs.org
>>>>     <mailto:gmx-developers-request at gromacs.org>.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Erik Lindahl <erik.lindahl at dbb.su.se <mailto:erik.lindahl at dbb.su.se>>
>>>> Professor of Biophysics, Dept. Biochemistry & Biophysics, Stockholm 
>>>> University
>>>> Science for Life Laboratory, Box 1031, 17121 Solna, Sweden
>>>>
>>



More information about the gromacs.org_gmx-developers mailing list