Maybe start the data exchange by sending a (presumably short)
list/array/index-function of the dirty/not-dirty blocks status
(say, 0=not-dirty,1=dirty),
then putting if conditionals before the Isend/Irecv so that only
dirty blocks are exchanged?

I hope this helps,
Gus Correa



On 05/01/2013 01:28 PM, Thomas Watson wrote:
Hi,

I have a program where each MPI rank hosts a set of data blocks. After
doing computation over *some of* its local data blocks, each MPI rank
needs to exchange data with other ranks. Note that the computation may
involve only a subset of the data blocks on a MPI rank. The data
exchange is achieved at each MPI rank through Isend and Irecv and then
Waitall to complete the requests. Each pair of Isend and Irecv exchanges
a corresponding pair of data blocks at different ranks. Right now, we do
Isend/Irecv for EVERY block!

The idea is that because the computation at a rank may only involves a
subset of blocks, we could mark those blocks as dirty during the
computation. And to reduce data exchange bandwidth, we could only
exchanges those *dirty* pairs across ranks.

The problem is: if a rank does not compute on a block 'm', and if it
does not call Isend for 'm', then the receiving rank must somehow know
this and either a) does not call Irecv for 'm' as well, or b) let Irecv
for 'm' fail gracefully.

My questions are:
1. how Irecv will behave (actually how MPI_Waitall will behave) if the
corresponding Isend is missing?

2. If we still post Isend for 'm', but because we really do not need to
send any data for 'm', can I just set a "flag" in Isend so that
MPI_Waitall on the receiving side will "cancel" the corresponding Irecv
immediately? For example, I can set the count in Isend to 0, and on the
receiving side, when MPI_Waitall see a message with empty payload, it
reclaims the corresponding Irecv? In my code, the correspondence between
a pair of Isend and Irecv is established by a matching TAG.

Thanks!

Jacky


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