APACHE Project
Laboratoire Informatique et Distribution (ID)
ENSIMAG - antenne de Montbonnot
ZIRST 51, avenue Jean Kuntzmann
38330 MONTBONNOT SAINT MARTIN
- France
| Athapascan-0
: Integrating Multithreading and Communications |
Introduction
Athapascan-0 was conceived to integrate communications and multithreading.
Its design is based on a simple juxtaposition of multithreading and
communication concepts. Athapascan-0 is organised on two layers.
The upper layer , called Athapascan-0 layer, is a programming interface
which offers thread-to-thread communication between threads on different
adress spaces, local and remote thread creation (popup model), and
remote thread execution (upcall model). The bottow layer, called
portability
layer, integrates multithreading and communications adding thread-awareness
to MPI.
Portability is one of Athapascan-0 main design edgoals.
To achieve it, Athapascan-0 is based on two well-known standards : MPI
and POSIX threads. |
 |
Programming model and main fonctionnalities
Athapascan-0 extends the static heavyweighted process communicating
model offered by MPI implementation to a lighter one, expressed as
a dynamic network of communicating threads. An Athapascan-0 program runs
over a virtual machine composed by at least one Athapascan-0 task
using a SPMD programming model. Athapascan-0 tasks correspond
to processes created by a MPI application. Like MPI, several Athapascan-0
tasks can be created on the same physical node.
A computation is first divided on Athapascan-0 tasks (processess)
and further, inside a task, divided on smaller pieces called slaves
(threads). A slave can create another slave locally or remotely.
Remote creation is given by service concept (popup model) and remote
execution is given by urgent service concept (upcall model).
Threads (slaves) on the same adress space communicate through a shared
memory. Synchronisation is done by classical mechanisms :
mutex, semaphores and conditon variables.
Threads (slaves) on different adress spaces communicate and synchronise
using point to point communication primitives based on MPI ones. Communications
channels between Athapascan-0 tasks are created using a port concept.
Any thread can send or receive data on a given port. A communication
end point is defined by a pair <source/destination id , port>. |
| 1990 - The OUF library (Occam Users Frustration) was
written for the Meganode (a 128 Inmos transputer-based parallel machine).
OUF provided a common parallel programming interface, which allowed programs
to be compiled with any of the existing compilers (Inmos, C3L, etc.). The
programming model was communicating processes and there was no support
for profiling or debugging.
1991 - The OUF library was ported to Sun3 and Sun4 architectures,
in order to benefit from Unix debuggers. It served as the lower layer for
an experimental toolkit used to write dynamic schedulers. It was written
using PVM 1.0 and Sun's light weight processes (LWP) library. LWP
provided preemptive threads which emulated the transputers time-sharing
and PVM provided the communication primitives and the virtual parallel
machine. The remote procedure call abstraction (RPC) was chosen as a convenient
means for writing distributed programs and to implement them
on top of Sun OUF.
1993 - The APACHE
project was created across the LMC-IMAG
(now ID-IMAG) and LGI-IMAG laboratories.
Athapascan was defined as a portable and efficient environment for parallel
programming, along with profiling, analysis, deterministic reexecution
and debugging. It was conceived on two layers: Athapascan-0, which implemented
the parallel RPC extension and Athapascan-1, the user-level interface and
the load balancing. Athapascan-0a kernel was the first version of Athapascan-0,
written on top of PVM and different threads libraries.
1995 - MPI and POSIX threads were chosen as the new basic libraries
of Athapascan, for performance and portability reasons.Athapascan-0 was
redesigned to be fully preemptive with priorities, with remote thread creation
and thread-to-thread communication.. |
| Papers |
Christaller, M. and Briat, J. and Rivière,
M. "Athapascan-0 : concepts structurants simples pour une programmation
parallèle efficace". Calculateurs Parallèles, 1995,
vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 173-196.
Briat, J. and Ginzburg, I. and Pasin, M. and Plateau, B. "Athapascan
Runtime : Efficiency for Irregular Problems". Springer Verlag.
Proceedings of the Europar'97 Conference. Passau, Germany, Aug. 1997, pp.
590-599.
Briat, J. and Ginzburg, I. and Pasin, M. "Athapascan-0b : un noyau
exécutif parallèle". Lettre du Calculateur
Parallèle, 1998, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 273-293.
A. Carissimi and M. Pasin "Athapascan: An Experience on Mixing
MPI Commmunications and Threads". Lecture Notes in Computer Science
(LNCS 1497). Spring Verlang. 5th European PVM/MPI User's Group
Meeting. Proceedings, Liverpool, UK, Sept. 1998, pp. 137-144.
These papers (we guess) can be very useful as an introduction
to Athapascan-0. You can find a complete list of papers references consulting
our publication list.
|
| Thesis
(French) |
Christaller, Michel "Vers un support d'exécution portable
pour applications parallèles irrégulières : Athapascan-0".
Thèse de doctorat en informatique. Université Joseph Fourier,
Grenoble, France, Nov. 1996. (check here
for an eletronic version.)
Ginzburg, Ilan "Athapascan-0b : Intégration efficace et
portable de multiprogrammation légère et de communications".Thèse
de doctorat en informatique. Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, Grenoble,
France, Sept. 1997. (ps
and pdf
files here.)
Rivière, Michel "Concepts structurants pour
la mise en oeuvre d'applications irrégulières : Application
au support exécutif parallèle Athapascan-0". Thèse
de doctorat en informatique. Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble,
France, Oct. 1997. (available only at mediathèque.
Sorry!)
Carissimi, Alexandre da Silva "Athapascan-0 : Exploitation de
la multiprogrammation légère sur les grappes de stations
multiprocesseurs".Thèse de doctorat en informatique. Institut
Polytechnique de Grenoble, Grenoble, France, Nov. 1999. (ps
and
pdf
files
here.)
|
| Manuals |
-
Manuals in HTML :
-
Manuals in postscritp :
|
| Current
Supported Systems |
Muliprocessor
version
(runs on monoprocessors also) |
We tested SMP/monoprocessor version in the following
systems :
-
Intel with Linux 2.x kernel
-
Sparc or Intel with Solaris 2.6/2.7
-
IBM SP with AIX 4.2/AIX 4.3
Using MPICH (see InstallationTips),
LAM MPI (see Installation Tips)
and MPI-IBM. At thread level we used the POSIX threads library available
on these systems.
We are able to take benefits from high performance networks like myrinet
and SCI. For that we are based on
MPI-BIP,
MPI-GM
for myrinet and
MP-MPICH
for SCI.
|
Monoprocessor
version
(only) |
We tested monoprocessor version in the following system :
-
IBM SP with AIX 3.2.5 and IBM/MPI-F
-
IBM SP with AIX 4.2 and IBM/MPI
-
DEC/Alpha with OSF/1 4.0 and LAM/MPI 6.1
-
HP-9000 with HP-UX 10.20 and LAM/MPI 6.1
-
SGI/MIPS with IRIX 6.3 and LAM/MPI 6.1
-
SGI/MIPS with IRIX 6.4 and SGI/MPI-3.1
-
Sparc or Intel with Solaris 2.5 and LAM/MPI 6.1
-
Intel with Linux 2.0.25, MIT threads 1.60.6 and LAM/MPI 6.1
|
| What
version should I use? |
Athapascan-0 is distributed on two versions:
-
Multiprocessor
-
Monoprocessor
The multiprocessor version was conceived to exploit efficiently
the existing processors on multiprocessor machines using kernel threads.
If you have a multiprocessor machine this version is more suitable for
you. If you have an heterogeneous network mixing monoprocessor and
multiprocessor machines it is better for you to use this
version.
The monoprocessor version is kept by historical reason :
it was our first product and it was broadly tested , ported and tunned
for several systems (see current supported
systems). This version uses user level threads (or kernel threads
if the target systems offers only this model, e.g., AIX 4.2). This version
is more suitable for monoprocessors. It works on multiprocessor machines
BUT it offers an awful performance.
|
| What
do I need to install Athapascan?? |
Install Athapascan-0 is very easy!!
You only need an MPI implantation and a thread package on your system.
First of all you need to choose an MPI implantation. This can be done
considering your personnal preference for an MPI implantation, to take
benefits from special hardware like myrinet, or use of an already installed
MPI package in your system. Nevertheless you need to pay attention to some
details about MPI and threads; for that, see Installation
Tips.
You need also a thread package. Nowadays most systems include
one, but if you wish to install Athapascan-0 on a system which doesn't
offer a pre-existing thread-package you can find some pointers for them
here.
|
| Multiprocessor
version |
Download here the current Athapascan-0
multiprocessor (SMP) version (3.0.0). |
| Monoprocessor
version |
Download here the current Athapascan-0
monoprocessor version (2.5.0). |
| MPICH |
ATTENTION
: MPICH over TCP/IP uses ch_p4
as device. P4 is an ancient
communication library developed on a not thread-safe
fashion. You CAN'T use ch_p4
device with threads consequently Athapascan doesn't
run on this configuration. |
| LAM
MPI |
LAM on AIX 4.2 systems
Before installing LAM on AIX 4.2 systems you need to modify the
following lines on share/h/lam_config.h file :
Original:
#define HAVE_BSD43_FD_PASSING 1
#define HAVE_BSD44_FD_PASSING 0
to:
#define HAVE_BSD43_FD_PASSING 0
#define HAVE_BSD44_FD_PASSING 1
LAM on Linux systems
You MUST use on LAM configure command line the following options:
--with-cflags='-D_REENTRANT' --with-signal=SIGUNUSED
LAM on Solaris systems
You MUST use on LAM configure command line the following options:
--with-cflags='-D_REENTRANT' --with-ldflags='-lpthread
-lthread -lposix4'
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