Index of /dist-ex/aries-conduit
README file for aries-conduit
================================
Paul H. Hargrove <[email protected]>
Larry Stewart <[email protected]>
=====================================================================
=====================================================================
The aries-conduit is now DEPRECATED.
No further development of aries-conduit is anticipated.
It will be removed in a future release.
The GASNet developers have neither the access nor the funding to keep
this conduit working in the near future. If you are interested in
contributing maintenance for this conduit, please contact
[email protected] ASAP
=====================================================================
=====================================================================
User Information:
-----------------
This documentation covers aries-conduit for Cray XC series systems.
Because these Cray systems have non-trivial differences between the login
nodes and the compute nodes, one must use a cross-configure script to build
either of these conduits. See other/contrib/cross-configure-cray-aries-* .
Where this conduit runs:
-----------------------
The aries-conduit runs on systems with Cray's "Aries" interconnect, including
their XC series machines. To the best of our knowledge, there are no known
compatibility issues with any release of the XC series system software.
Optional configure-time settings:
------------------------------
--with-aries-max-medium=[value]
By default gasnet_AMMaxMedium() is 4032: a 4096 byte buffer minus
64 bytes reserved for up to 16 handler arguments. This configure
option allows control over the value of gasnet_AMMaxMedium().
The value must be a multiple of 64, and cannot be less than 512 or
greater than 65408.
It is recommended to use values that are 64-bytes less than a
power-of-two, to preserve efficient memory use. By default,
values will be rounded down to the nearest such recommended value
or to the minimum value of 512. One may prefix '+' to the
setting to prevent this behavior.
The default value is 4032.
--enable-aries-multi-domain
This configure option enables EXPERIMENTAL support for improved
performance of RDMA operations in a PAR (multi-threaded) build of
Aries conduit by allocating multiple GNI Communication
Domains and distributing the clients threads over these domains.
Since operations on a given domain must be serialized (we use a
pthread mutex), use of multiple domains can significantly reduce
lock contention. The trade-offs are that with multiple domains
the maximum size of the GASNet segment may be reduced, and progress
on Active Messages may be slowed.
The following three environment variables are honored when
multi-domain support is enabled. These three variables are not
required to be single-valued.
GASNET_DOMAIN_COUNT
This is the number of Communication Domains to create per process.
The multi-domain support has no benefits unless this is set to a
value larger than 1.
The default value is 1 (a single domain with no benefits).
GASNET_GNI_PTHREADS_PER_DOMAIN
This is the number of threads to assign to the first domain before
assigning any to the second. When the last domain has been assigned
this many threads, then assignment resumes at the first domain.
The default value is 1 (cyclic/round-robin assignment).
GASNET_AM_DOMAIN_POLL_MASK
This value controls how often threads in domains other than the
first poll for arrival of Active Messages (threads in the first
domain poll on every call to gasnet_AMPoll). Since all Active
Message traffic arrives via the first domain, polling by more than
one thread will increase lock contention, but a total lack of
polling by threads in other domains can lead to deadlock in some
circumstances.
A value of 0 will result in polling for Active Messages on every
call (explicit or implicit) to gasnet_AMPoll().
Values of 1, 3, 7, 15, etc. will result in progressively lower
average frequencies (1 in (n+1)).
The default is 255 (1 in every 256 polls by threads outside the
first domain will poll for AM arrivals).
Optional compile-time settings:
------------------------------
* All the compile-time settings from extended-ref (see the extended-ref README)
in aries-conduit/gasnet_aries.h:
GASNETC_USE_SPINLOCK - 0 use gasneti_mutex_t (default)
1 use gasneti_spinlock_t
The _DEFAULT values for all of the GASNET_GNI_ environment variables.
in aries-conduit/gasnet_aries.c:
int gasnetc_poll_burst = 10; /* number of rdma completions to get at once */
Configuring job launch:
----------------------
Both ALPS (aprun) and native SLURM (srun) are supported for job-launch by the
provided gasnetrun_aries script. The value of the environment variable
PMIRUN_CMD can be used to choose between these two. The value when configure
is run establishes a default, which a value set at job-launch time can
override. The corresponding cross-configure scripts establish the following
default (recommended) values:
+ For ALPS: PMIRUN_CMD="aprun -n %N %C"
+ For native SLURM: PMIRUN_CMD="srun -K0 -W60 %V -mblock -n %N %C"
If set at cross-configure time, the APRUN or SRUN environment variables
can be used to provide full paths to the respective utilities. If you
require additional customization, please cross-configure with the option
--with-pmirun-cmd=VALUE
where VALUE is the desired PMIRUN_CMD value (the format of which is the
same as for MPIRUN_CMD, documented in mpi-conduit's README).
NOTE:
This release uses two distinct options when configuring Cray systems:
--with-mpirun-cmd=VALUE used to configure gasnetrun_mpi
--with-pmirun-cmd=VALUE used to configure gasnetrun_aries
However, to support legacy configuration scripts, if one passes only the
option '--with-mpirun-cmd=...' then it will set a default value for *both*
the MPIRUN_CMD and PMIRUN_CMD environment variables.
Recognized environment variables:
---------------------------------
* All the standard GASNet environment variables (see top-level README)
All variable below must (unless otherwise noted) be single-valued
(have the same value in all processes) or the behavior is undefined.
GASNET_BARRIER - barrier algorithm selection
In addition to the algorithms in the top-level README, there is an
implementation specific to Aries:
GNIDISSEM - like RDMADISSEM, but implemented using lower-level
GNI operations for lower latency.
Currently GNIDISSEM is the default.
GASNET_HOST_DETECT - host identification
Aries-conduit supports *only* "conduit", using Cray-provided APIs which
provide an array of all of the low-level network addresses.
If configured using '--with-host-detect=...' for an otherwise-valid value
other than "conduit", that default is ignored in favor of "conduit".
However, an explicit environment setting other than "conduit" is an error.
GASNET_GNI_AM_RVOUS_CUTOVER - enable/disable rendezvous based AMs
At small scale, Active Messages are implemented using an "Eager" protocol
which allocates buffers sufficient for every process to receive up to
GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH_SPACE worth of AM traffic from every other process
simultaneously. At large scale the memory consumption is untenable, and
an alternative "Rendezvous" algorithm is used. It requires only constant
memory, but adds latency to AM traffic.
This parameter sets the cutover between the two implementations.
+ If the value is 0, the Eager algorithm is always used
+ If the value is 1, the Rendezvous algorithm is always used
+ For all other positive values, the Rendezvous algorithm used for runs
with a process count greater than or equal to this parameter, and Eager
is used otherwise.
The default value is 16384.
GASNET_GNI_AM_RVOUS_BUFFERS - number of AM rendezvous buffers
Used only for "Rendezvous" AM protocol (see GASNET_GNI_AM_RVOUS_CUTOVER).
This determines the maximum number of incoming AM Requests that can be
concurrently received and processed by any given endpoint using the
Rendezvous protocol
The default value is 64, and the minimum is 1.
GASNET_GNI_MAX_MEDIUM - max payload of 16-argument AM Mediums
This determines the maximum size of AM Medium payloads with 16 arguments.
More specifically, this is the value returned by gex_AM_LUBRequestMedium(),
gex_AM_LUBReplyMedium() and the legacy API gasnet_AMMaxMedium().
The value must be a multiple of 64, between 512 and 65408, inclusive.
See the documentation for --with-aries-max-medium, above, for recommended
values and corresponding convenience aliases.
The default value is 4032, unless a different default was set at configure
time using --with-aries-max-medium=N.
GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH_TOTAL - depth of out-going AM Request queue
This determines the maximum number of AM Requests that can be
outstanding from one endpoint to all others before flow-control.
The default value is 64, and the minimum is 1.
GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH - depth of per-peer AM Request queue
This determines the number of AM Requests (in messages) that can be
outstanding between a given pair of endpoints before flow-control.
If this value exceeds GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH_TOTAL, it will be reduced to
the same value (with a warning).
The default value is 64, and the minimum is 1.
GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH_SPACE - volume of Eager AM Request queue
Used only for "Eager" AM protocol (see GASNET_GNI_AM_RVOUS_CUTOVER).
This determines the maximum volume of AM Requests (in bytes) that can be
outstanding between a given pair of peers before flow-control in the Eager
AM protocol, even if less than GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH Requests are outstanding.
Values smaller than two maximum-size Medium AMs, or larger than 64 maximum-
sized Medium AMs, will be silently adjusted to that range.
Additionally, values will be silently rounded down to the product of a
power-of-two times GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH. When GASNET_GNI_MAX_MEDIUM is set
to a recommended value, this adjustment results in an exact multiple of the
maximum size of an AM medium. For all other values, however, there will not
be such an alignment of sizes and the maximum number of max-size AM Mediums
in flight simultaneously may be reduced as a result.
The default value (prior to the adjustment noted above) is four maximum-size
Medium AMs (16K with all defaults).
See also GASNET_GNI_MAX_MEDIUM, above, regarding the maximum size of a
Medium AM and recommended values.
GASNET_LONG_DEPTH - depth of per-peer Long tracking
This determines the maximum number of AM Long Requests payload transfers
that can be outstanding between a given pair of peers before flow-control.
This limit is applied in addition to any flow-control required due to the
"NETWORKDEPTH" variables, above.
The default value is no additional constraint.
The minimum value is 1 and the maximum is 64.
GASNET_GNI_PACKEDLONG_CUTOVER
This determines the maximum Long AM size using a "Packed Long" protocol.
To perform an Long AM with non-empty payload requires transfer of both the
payload and a header (containing arguments and 12 bytes of metadata). For
large payloads, it's most efficient to implement the payload transfer using
zero-copy RDMA. However, for sufficiently small payloads, it is more
efficient (in terms of both CPU and network costs) to pack the header and
payload together and copy the payload into place using the target-side CPU
before running the handler. For Long AMs with the sum of payload and
header sizes up to and including this value, this Packed Long protocol is
used.
The default value is system dependent.
The maximum value is 4096, unless --with-aries-max-medium=N was passed to
configure (in which case the maximum is N+64). Larger values will be
silently reduced to this limit.
A value of zero ensures the payload and header always travel separately.
GASNET_GNI_AMPOLL_BURST - max events processed per AMPoll
This determines the maximum number of GNI-level events processed per call to
gasnet_AMPoll(), both explicit and implicit. If GASNet calls which poll for
AM arrival are infrequent, it may be desirable to increase this setting to
ensure any backlog of events can be cleared at each such call.
In a GASNET_PAR build, increased values of this setting may reduce the
opportunity for concurrent AM handler execution (since a thread may
serialize execution of handlers corresponding to this many consecutive
GNI-level events).
The default value is 20, the minimum is 1.
GASNET_GNI_AM_MEMORY_REPORT
The value is a boolean: "0" to disable or "1" to enable the reporting of
the memory allocated for AM buffers (controlled by the GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH*
and GASNET_GNI_AM_RVOUS_* families of settings) on stderr.
The default is "0" (no report).
GASNET_GNI_NUM_PD - number of post descriptors
AM and RDMA operations all requires use of a control block called a
Post Descriptor. This variable controls how many of these are
allocated, and therefore limit the total number of operations which
can be in-flight at any time.
The default value is 512, and the minimum is 32.
This variable is not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_GNI_GET_FMA_RDMA_CUTOVER
GASNET_GNI_PUT_FMA_RDMA_CUTOVER
These set the cutover from use of FMA (Fast Memory Access) to BTE (Block
Transfer Engine) NIC functional units for RMA Put and Get operations.
Transfers up to and including these sizes will be performed using FMA. FMA
typically yields lower latency to start an operation at the expense of
greater involvement by the CPU (and thus less potential, for instance, for
overlap of non-blocking communication with computation). Because the NIC
supports greater concurrency via FMA, it may also yield greater aggregate
throughput when multiple processes per node perform RMA concurrently.
Advantages of BTE include asynchrony of the transfer without CPU
involvement, and the ability to reach peak bandwidth with a lower volume
(size and count) of RMA transfers.
Performance of Puts and Gets in the 256 to 8192 byte range can be very
sensitive to these values and to the degree of communication concurrency.
You may want to adjust these parameters if you believe RMA operations in this
range determine the performance of your application.
Both values default to 1023
The maximum supported value is 16384
These variables are not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_GNI_GET_BOUNCE_REGISTER_CUTOVER - default 4096, max 32768
GASNET_GNI_PUT_BOUNCE_REGISTER_CUTOVER - default 4096, max 32768
Every Post Descriptor has a small bounce buffer (128 bytes) for
handling out-of-segment transfers (normally FMAs) with the least
overhead. Beyond that size out-of-segment can be performed using
either bounce buffers or dynamic registration. Such transfers up
to and including these sizes will be conducted using bounce buffers.
Beyond these sizes, dynamic memory registration is used.
The minimum allowed is GASNET_PAGESIZE (normally 4K) and lower values
will be silently replaced by this value.
These variables are not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_GNI_BOUNCE_SIZE - default 256K, space for bounce buffers
There is a pool of bounce buffers, each of a fixed size determined by the
larger of GASNET_GNI_{PUT,GET}_BOUNCE_REGISTER_CUTOVER (see above). The
value of GASNET_GNI_BOUNCE_SIZE determines the size of the entire pool of
bounce buffers. Thus the number of bounce buffers available is
GASNET_GNI_BOUNCE_SIZE / MAX(GASNET_GNI_PUT_BOUNCE_REGISTER_CUTOVER,
GASNET_GNI_GET_BOUNCE_REGISTER_CUTOVER,
(gasnet_AMMaxMedium() + 64))
Since all three terms in the MAX default to 4K, the default 256K gives
64 bounce buffers.
If an operation must allocate a bounce buffer and the pool is empty,
it will poll the completion queue until one is returned. Therefore, this
setting may limit the number of operations requiring use of a bounce
buffer which can be in-flight at any time.
This variable is not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_GNI_MEM_CONSISTENCY
This controls the use of the flag GNI_MEM_STRICT_PI_ORDERING,
GNI_MEM_RELAXED_PI_ORDERING, or neither when registering memory
for RDMA. In general, users are not expected to have any need
to change the value away from the default.
The legal values are the strings "strict", "relaxed" or "none".
In this release the default is "relaxed".
GASNET_GNI_MEMREG
This controls the maximum number of concurrent temporary memory
registrations, used for RDMA transfers to and from addresses outside of
the GASNet segment.
The default value is 3072.
This variable is not required to be single-valued.
If this vale is too large (possibly due to competition with MPI or
another runtime library) you will see a fatal error at startup. If
GASNet detects the resource exhaustion, the message includes the
following text:
UDREG_CacheCreate() failed with rc=2
Alternatively, if the resource exhaustion is detected by the MPI runtime
you may see a message including the following text:
UDREG_CacheCreate unknown error return 2
Other runtimes may include similar failure messages.
If you encounter these failures you should reduce the value of this
parameter, or in the extreme you may wish to set GASNET_USE_UDREG=0 to
disable use of UDREG by GASNet.
GASNET_GNI_FMA_SHARING
This controls the use of shared versus dedicated FMA resources, used for
the initiation of AMs and of Puts and Gets of size below the respective
GASNET_GNI_{PUT,GET}_FMA_RDMA_CUTOVER value.
The value is a boolean: "0" to disable or "1" to enable the use of shared
FMA resources.
The default is to use dedicated FMA resources (which are expected to give
better performance) unless it can be determined that the required resources
would exceed the available resources in dedicated mode.
This variable is not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_GNI_MDD_SHARING
This controls the use of shared versus dedicated MDD resources, used for
the registration of memory with the NIC for Puts and Gets of size over
the respective GASNET_GNI_{PUT,GET}_FMA_RDMA_CUTOVER value.
Use of dedicated MDD resources may reduce latency of some operations at
the expense of being able to register less memory simultaneously.
The value is a boolean: "0" to disable or "1" to enable the use of shared
MDD resources.
The default is use of shared MDD resources.
This variable is not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_GNI_BTE_MULTI_CHANNEL
The value is a boolean: "0" to disable or "1" to enable the use of all
available Block Transfer Engine (BTE) channels. Rarely, an application
may benefit from use of a single channel (a setting of "0"). However,
for most applications the use of all channels gives higher sustained
bandwidth for large transfers.
The default is "1" (enabled).
GASNET_GNI_ROUTING_MODE
The "delivery mode" used to control packet routing in the Aries network.
The following string values (case insensitive) may be specified for this
variable. The respective meanings are exactly as documented for the
MPICH_GNI_ROUTING_MODE variable in Cray's intro_mpi(3) manpage.
+ "IN_ORDER"
Packet order is preserved between any source/destination pair.
This does not provide ordering of GASNet-level operations.
+ "NMIN_HASH"
Deterministic routing using non-minimal paths
+ "MIN_HASH"
Deterministic routing using minimal (shortest) paths
+ "ADAPTIVE_0"
Adaptive routing with no bias toward minimal routes
+ "ADAPTIVE_1"
Adaptive routing with bias toward minimal routes increasing at each hop
+ "ADAPTIVE_2"
Adaptive routing with small fixed bias toward minimal routes
+ "ADAPTIVE_3"
Adaptive routing with large fixed bias toward minimal routes
The default is "ADAPTIVE_0".
GASNET_PHYSMEM_MAX
If set, this parameter is used to determine the maximum amount of memory
the conduit may pin per compute node (each process on a given compute node is
allocated an equal share of this limit, assuming PSHM is enabled as per
default). This indirectly limits how large the GASNet segment can be.
The value may specify either a relative or absolute size. If the value
parses as a floating-point value less than 1.0 (including fractions such
as "5/8"), then this is taken as a fraction of the (estimated) physical
memory. Otherwise the value is taken as an absolute memory size, with "M",
"G" and "T" suffixes accepted to indicate units of Megabytes, Gigabytes,
and Terabytes, respectively.
The default is "0.8" (80% of estimated physical memory).
This variable is not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_PHYSMEM_PROBE
This gives a boolean: "1" to enable (default) or "0" to disable the validation
(potentially slow) of the GASNET_PHYSMEM_MAX value.
By default the environment variable GASNET_PHYSMEM_MAX is untrusted and its
setting is validated at startup (reducing the value if appropriate). The time
required for this step can scale with the amount of memory and the number of
processes per host.
Disabling this probe can save time at startup, but at the risk that the
true limit on pinnable memory is lower than given by GASNET_PHYSMEM_MAX (or
by its default value). If that occurs, then it is possible that aries-conduit
will exceed the limits later in execution, leading to crashes.
The default is enabled.
GASNET_USE_UDREG
AVAILABLE UNLESS CONFIGURED WITH --disable-aries-udreg.
This gives a boolean: "0" to disable or "1" to enable the use of the
UDREG library for caching of local memory registrations, and is
intended primarily for debugging purposes.
The default is enabled.
This variable is not required to be single-valued.
GASNET_USE_CE
This gives a boolean: "0" to disable or "1" to enable the use of the Aries
Collective Engine (CE) for acceleration of certain collective operations
(barrier in particular).
The default is enabled.
GASNET_USE_CE_PSHM
This gives a boolean: "0" to disable or "1" to enable the use of the Aries
CE when the count of processes per host exceeds what the CE can support
directly. This uses a hybrid CE + shared-memory implementation when the
per-host process count is too large, but the per-host shared-memory
neighborhood count is not.
This setting is ignored if PSHM was disabled at configure time.
The default is enabled.
GASNET_GNI_CE_RADIX
This gives an integer in the range 1 to 31 for the radix of the N-ary tree
tree used for inter-host communication by the Aries Collective Engine (CE).
Increased values of this parameter come at the expense of intra-host
communication. If the sum of this value and the number of "leaves" per
host exceeds 32, then use of the Aries CE will be disabled. Here "leaves"
means processes if GASNET_USE_CE_PSHM=0 at runtime (or PSHM was disabled at
configure time). Otherwise it denotes shared-memory neighborhoods.
The default is 2.
GASNET_DOMAIN_COUNT
GASNET_GNI_PTHREADS_PER_DOMAIN
GASNET_AM_DOMAIN_POLL_MASK
AVAILABLE ONLY IF CONFIGURED WITH --enable-aries-multi-domain.
These three variables are not required to be single-valued.
For their use, please see the multi-domain documentation under the
"Optional configure-time settings" section, above.
MPICH_RANK_REORDER_METHOD
This environment variable is not processed directly by GASNet itself.
However, it controls the numbering of GASNet processes launched with
either 'aprun' or 'srun', as described in Cray's intro_mpi(3) manpage.
PMI_GNI_LOC_ADDR - NIC address on local node
PMI_GNI_COOKIE - Access code shared by all nodes in job
PMI_GNI_PTAG - Protection tag shared by all nodes in job
PMI_GNI_DEV_ID - Device ID (Selects which NIC is in use)
Provided by Cray runtime system. Don't mess with these.
Remote Atomics:
---------------
The following table indicates the pairs of atomic operation and data type that
are eligible for offloaded to the Aries NIC. The offloaded atomics will be
used when the arguments to gex_AD_Create() express only supported pairs (unless
suppressed by use of GEX_FLAG_AD_FAVOR_MY_RANK or GEX_FLAG_AD_FAVOR_MY_NBRHD
flags, or in a run spanning a single shared memory nbrhd.)
I32 U32 I64 U64 FLT DBL
--- --- --- --- --- ---
SET: Y Y Y Y Y Y
GET: Y Y Y Y Y Y
SWAP: Y Y Y Y Y Y
(F)CAS: Y Y Y Y Y Y
(F)ADD: Y Y Y Y Y N
(F)SUB: Y Y Y Y Y N
(F)INC: Y Y Y Y Y N
(F)DEC: Y Y Y Y Y N
(F)MULT: N N N N N N
(F)MIN: Y N Y N Y Y
(F)MAX: Y N Y N Y Y
(F)AND: Y Y Y Y N/A N/A
(F)OR: Y Y Y Y N/A N/A
(F)XOR: Y Y Y Y N/A N/A
Y = offload is supported
N = offload is not supported
N/A indicates invalid op/type pairs
Known problems:
---------------
* Bug 3480
It has been observed on Cray systems running CLE6 that following a call to
munmap(), there may be a delay before the physical page frames are available
for reallocation. At startup GASNet normally tries to determine the largest
available mmap() region, which is then unmapped, leading to the possibility
that subsequent allocation of a large GASNet segment may fail if timing is
"just right". The configure option --enable-bug3480-workaround will enable
retries and an additional barrier to prevent the failure mode described
above, at the cost of a small additional delay at startup.
In this release, the provided cross-configure-cray-* scripts AUTOMATICALLY
enable the work-around if CLE6 is detected. If you do *not* desire the
work-around, then you may pass the option --disable-bug3480-workaround to
the cross-configure script.
The most up-to-date information on this bug is maintained at:
https://gasnet-bugs.lbl.gov/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3480
It is currently unknown if this problem is specific to Cray systems.
* Bug 4454
The probe for maximum pinnable memory depends on the job size, even though
there is no actual need for information from other hosts. This may motivate
setting GASNET_PHYSMEM_PROBE=0 to reduce startup time, even when doing so
might be unsafe.
The most up-to-date information on this bug is maintained at:
https://gasnet-bugs.lbl.gov/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4454
* See the GASNet Bugzilla server for details on other known bugs:
https://gasnet-bugs.lbl.gov/
Future work:
------------
* Inline
It should be possible to inline the special cases of short blocking GET and short blocking PUT
* Alternative designs
The O(N) AM buffers queues could be used only for wakeup, leaving AM transport
to RDMA, more along the lines of the shmem-conduit. This would reduce buffer
requirements for large jobs.
==============================================================================
Design Overview:
----------------
The aries conduit provides the gasnet core and extended APIs on Cray systems
based on the aries interconnect. Initial work was done for the gemini
interconnect on the XE6, and the notes which follow are based on that initial
implementation.
PORTIONS OF THIS DOCUMENTATION ARE OUT-OF-DATE.
References:
Cray documentation "Using the GNI and DMAPP APIs" document S-2446-3102/S-2446-5202
https://pubs.cray.com/bundle/S-2446-52
APIs:
PMI-2
/opt/cray/pmi/default/include
GNI
/opt/cray/gni-headers/default/include/gni_pub.h
==Background==
The Gemini interconnect was introduced with the Cray XE6 system. It
may be thought of as an evolutionary development of the Seastar
interconnect used on the Red Storm system and the Cray XT series.
Physically Gemini is a 3D torus system using network interfaces that
connect directly to the Hyperchannel IO bus of AMD processors.
The Aries interconnect was introduced in the Cray XC series, and retains
the same GNI communications API (with some small changes in semantics).
This conduit currently supports only the Aries network, with the support
for Gemini having been removed.
Logically GNI provides short messages, remote memory access, remote
atomic operations, and remote block transfers. Memory must be
registered with GNI before it can be used for communications. Job
launch services are provided by the Cray Application Level Placement
Scheduler (ALPS), with API provided through implementations of the PMI
(process management interface) API.
During initialization, a parallel application creates a Communications
Domain, which is basically a binding to a particular network interface.
Data necessary to get permit ranks of a parallel application to
communicate are provided via environment variables and PMI interfaces.
In GNI, the address information for a remote rank is stored in a
software structure called an Endpoint. Generally a separate endpoint
is needed for each rank of the job. Each endpoint is associated with
a Completion Queue (CQ) which signals when locally originated
operations to a particular endpoint have finished. Cqs may be used by
multiple endpoints.
The Gemini and Aries networks provide two flavors of RDMA. FMA, or Fast
Memory Access, provides remote atomic operations, and remote get and
put. These operations are commanded by user-mode applications directly
to the hardware, (so called OS Bypass). For larger messages, Cray
provides an RDMA facility based on a hardware Byte Transfer Engine,
but its use is mediated by the kernel mode device driver. It isn't
clear when one should use RDMA rather than FMA, but a few hundred
bytes to a few thousand bytes is likely.
==Overview==
The aries conduit creates an endpoint for every rank, and then binds
each endpoint to a particular rank using the address information
exchanged through PMI. Each endpoint in GNI is also associated
with a common completion queue, which is a structure used for
announcing the completion of locally originated messages.
Next the aries conduit allocates and registers storage for buffers for
active messages. Arriving messages are signaled on a second completion
queue.
==Active Message design==
The aries conduit supports PSHM for same-node communications. So, GNI is
normally used only between compute nodes.
The management of buffer memory on the target is complex, and not yet
detailed here. Management of memory on the initiator consists of
allocating a pool of buffers sufficient to hold a maximum-sized message,
regardless of the size of the message to send. This allows the same buffer
to be used to receive the Reply (if any).
Flow control and deadlock avoidance is done by a fixed credit system.
The GASNET_NETWORKDEPTH* family of environment variables determine the
number of AM credits for each peer. Each peer has an am_credit
variable. When a rank wishes to send an active message, it atomic
decrements the peer's credit counter and calls the aries conduit's Poll
routine until it succeeds. At the target, every AM Request generates a
"hidden" credit return message if and only if the handler did not send a
Reply (using the "notify word" described below).
The first portion of an active message is sent to the target with a
64-bit "notify word" carrying some key metadata. This word is written
to a per-initiator ring buffer used as a means to effectively add 8
bytes to the target-side Cq entry also generated. In the case of the
"eager" protocol (see 'GASNET_GNI_AM_RVOUS_CUTOVER' in "Recognized
environment variables") used for smaller job sizes, the notify word is
written as the "sync flag" of a GNI_POST_FMA_PUT_W_SYNCFLAG operation,
with the main FMA_PUT being to a pool of per-initiator target-side
buffers. In case of the "rendezvous" protocol, there is a single pool
of buffers managed by the target. In this case the notify is sent
alone, via a GNI_POST_FMA_PUT.
Short and Medium active messages need one message each in the eager
protocol. However, in the rendezvous protocol a Short or Medium Request
is split into two portions. The first is a message containing only
metadata, excluding the arguments and payload, but includes metadata
sufficient for the target to perform an RDMA Get to fetch the rest (if
any) in a second network transaction.
In both protocols, a Reply is a single message using a GNI-level
GNI_POST_FMA_PUT_W_SYNCFLAG operation to write arguments and payload (if
any) to the buffer allocated to the original outbound Request, together
with the 8-byte notify word.
Long active messages are more complex. If the data of a long AM will
fit in a maximum sized message, then it is "packed" as immediate data,
similar to a Medium, and copied at the destination (with the payload
handling subject to the same eager versus rendezvous distinction as
described above). If the data is too large for this "packed" approach,
then it is sent by RDMA, and a Cq event generated at the target allows
it to determine when all parts (as many as three in rendezvous mode)
have arrived. This is described in
Hargrove P, Bonachea D.
"Efficient Active Message RMA in GASNet Using a Target-Side Reassembly
Protocol (Extended Abstract)"
In 2019 IEEE/ACM Parallel Applications Workshop, Alternatives To MPI+X
(PAW-ATM), November 2019.
https://doi.org/10.25344/S4PC7M
==RDMA==
Within the GNI API, RDMA is commanded by creating a Post
Descriptor and passing it to GNI. Both the source and destination
memory of an RDMA transfer must be registered. The knowledge of RDMA
is encapsulated in the functions named gasnetc_rdma_{put,get}*().
GASNet requires that the remote address of a put or get will be within
the GASNet memory segment, which is pre-registered by gemini-conduit.
GASNet does not require that the local address of a put or get be
registered. There are a number of cases.
As mentioned above, GNI provides two kinds of RDMA: FMA and BTE
(called "RDMA"). FMA is Fast Memory Access and is used for short
transfers and is commanded entirely in user mode. The Byte Transfer
Engine is intended for larger transfers and is kernel mediated.
Aries-conduit allocates a pool of RDMA Post Descriptors, called
gasnetc_post_descriptor. These are kept on a LIFO queue in registered
memory, because each one contains an "immediate" bounce buffer to
be used in the event the local address of a short xfer is not
registered.
Aries-conduit also allocates a pool of medium sized bounce buffers,
which are used in the event the local address of a transfer is not
registered and is too large for the immediate buffer. For transfers
to or from memory outside the GASNet segment that are too large for
the medium sized bounce buffer, the local buffer is registered for
the duration of the transfer, then unregistered.
The post descriptor also contains a completion field, that defines
what to do when the RDMA is finished, and a set of flags that control
completion behavior.
RDMA Completion event processing is done by gasnetc_poll_local_queue.
A number of types of follow-on activities are implemented:
* For a GET, potentially copy data from a bounce buffer to the actual
target
* Potentially De-register specially registered memory
* Potentially free a dedicated bounce buffer
* Perform completion processing (signal other software waiting for
RDMA completion
The GASNet Core API only uses RDMA PUT. The extended API uses both GET
and PUT. The logic for GET is similar to that for PUT.
==Extended API==
Aries conduit uses the reference implementation of gasnet_op_t for
completions.
Due to occasional failures of memory registration of large blocks, if
an RDMA transfer is larger than one megabyte, it is broken into
smaller segments and all but the last are sent by blocking protocol.
NOTE: The breakup of large blocks should probably be done for Long AMs
as well, to allow increasing gasnet_AMMaxLong{Request,Reply}().
==Locking==
In order to support GASNET_PAR mode, a variety of locks are used.
GASNETC_LOCK_GNI, GASNETC_UNLOCK_GNI
The Cray gni API is not thread-safe, so the aries conduit uses a
single big lock around calls to gni. Certain cases might be thread
safe, but without knowledge of the internals of gni it is hard to tell.
Queue Locks
A singly linked lists are used for the smsg_work_queue, and has its
own lock. The are enqueue and dequeue functions that work on this
queue.
The bounce buffer pool and post descriptor pool use the
gasneti_lifo_push and gasneti_lifo_pop functions.
These are lock-free on the x86-64 architecture.
==Event Processing==
The aries conduit uses two gni completion queues: bound_cq_handle for
completions of locally originated RDMA, and am_cq_handle, for
arriving Active Messages.
===bound_cq_handle (RDMA completion)===
On a call to gasnetc_poll_local_queue, up to gasnetc_poll_burst (default 10)
completions are processed. If the completion queue is empty, the
function exits early. For each completed post descriptor, the flags
are checked and post-completion activities performed:
GC_POST_COPY - copy from bounce buffer to target
GC_POST_SEND - send an AM that was waiting for PUT completion (AMLong)
GC_POST_UNREGISTER - deregister one-time memory registration
GC_POST_UNBOUNCE - free an allocated bounce buffer
GC_POST_COMPLETION_FLAG - atomic set a variable to signal a waiting thread
GC_POST_COMPLETION_OP - gasnete_op_markdone
===smsg_cq_handle===
NOTE: This section no longer accurate - we no longer use SMSG
When a short message arrives, an event is sent to the completion queue
associated with the endpoint of the message source. The receiver
looks at the event to figure out which endpoint signaled, then calls
GNI_SmsgGetNext(endpoint) to get the message. However, events are
generated whenever a message arrives, but they may be out of order,
and SmsgGetNext only delivers messages in-order. Consequently, when
you get an event, there may appear to be no message waiting, or there
may be several messages waiting. It is necessary to keep calling
SmsgGetNext until you get all the waiting messages. At the same time,
it is necessary to read the completion queue at least once for every
message received or the completion queue will fill up. If the
completion queue overflows, some events may be lost and it will be
necessary to drain all endpoints to make sure no messages are left
waiting.
The work starts in gasnetc_poll_smsg_queue.
First a call is make to gasnetc_poll_smsg_completion_queue, which reads up
to AM_BURST events from the completion queue and quickly adds the
relevant endpoints to a temporary array. Then, after releasing the
GNI big lock, the array is scanned, and any peers which are not
already on the smsg_work_queue are added to it. The smsg_work_queue
is a list of endpoints which may have arriving traffic. Finally,
gasnetc_poll_smsg_completion_queue checks to see if the smsg completion
queue overflowed, in which case the completion queue is drained and
ALL endpoints are added to the smsg_work_queue
Then for up to SMSG_PEER_BURST ranks, gasnetc_process_smsg_q(source rank)
is called to deal with any arriving messages.
In gasnetc_process_smsg_q, arriving short messages are read and a dispatch
is made on the message type. In the case of active messages, the
message is copied into a local variable, the SMSG buffer is released,
and then the AM handler is called. This is done in order to prevent
stack growth caused by recursive calls to process arriving
messages. Each time around the message processing loop,
gasnetc_poll_smsg_completion_queue is called, which may result in
additional ranks being queued on the smsg_work_queue, but does not
cause recursive calls to gasnetc_process_smsg_q. This is done so that the
average rate of retiring completion events is equal to the rate of
processing messages, and prevents completion queue overflow.
==Exit protocol==
NOTE: This section no longer accurate - we do more than is described here.
The exit algorithm is borrowed from the portals-conduit. The Cray
runtime system ALPS (Application Layout and Placement System) is
strict about exiting without calling PMI_Finalize. It will interpret
that as an error exit and kill all the other ranks.
==Initialization==
The logic to determine the maximum size pinnable segment is borrowed
from the portals-conduit.
The gasnetc_bootstrap* functions contain the interface to PMI. It also includes
the implementation of AllGather for GASNet bootstrapExchange and GNI
initialization. It uses PMI_AllGather. For some reason,
PMI_AllGather does not return data in rank order, so it is sorted into
the usual AllGather order internally.
gasnet_core.c routine gasnetc_init also contains code to determine
which ranks have shared memory. This is done using the
PMI_Get_pes_on_smp() call, translated into the right format for
gasnet_nodemap[].
The gasnet auxseg machinery is used to allocate registered memory for
bounce buffers and for the rdma post descriptor pool. This is done to
reduce the number of separately registered segments, because
registrations are a scarce resource.
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