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  1. Download and compile the code in your Atos HPCF or ECS shell session with the following commands:

    No Format
    module load prgenv/gnu hpcx-openmpi
    wget https://git.ecdf.ed.ac.uk/dmckain/xthi/-/raw/master/xthi.c
    mpicc -o xthi -fopenmp xthi.c -lnuma


  2. Try to run the program interactively to familiarise yourself with the ouptut:

    No Format
    $ ./xthi
    Host=ac6-200  MPI Rank=0  CPU=128  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=0,128

    As you can see,  only 1 process and 1 thread are run, and they may run on one of two virtual cores assigned to my session (which correspond to the same physical CPU). If you try to run with 4 OpenMP threads, you will see they will effectively fight each other for those same two cores, impacting the performance of your application but not anyone else in the login node:

    No Format
    $ OMP_NUM_THREADS=4 ./xthi
    Host=ac6-200  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=0  CPU=128  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=0,128
    Host=ac6-200  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=1  CPU=  0  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=0,128
    Host=ac6-200  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=2  CPU=128  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=0,128
    Host=ac6-200  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=3  CPU=  0  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=0,128


  3. Create a new job script fractional.sh to run xthi with 2 MPI tasks and 2 OpenMP threads, submit it and check the output to ensure the right number of tasks and threads were spawned. 

    Here is a job template to start with:

    Code Block
    languagebash
    titlebroken1.sh
    collapsetrue
    #!/bin/bash
    #SBATCH --output=fractional.out
    # Add here the missing SBATCH directives for the relevant resources
    
    # Add here the line to run xthi
    # Hint: use srun
    


    Expand
    titleSolution

    Using your favourite editor, create a file called fractional.sh with the following content:

    Code Block
    languagebash
    titlefractional.sh
    #!/bin/bash
    #SBATCH --output=fractional.out
    # Add here the missing SBATCH directives for the relevant resources
    #SBATCH --ntasks=2
    #SBATCH --cpus-per-task=2
    
    # Add here the line to run xthi
    # Hint: use srun
    srun -c $SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK ./xthi

    You need to request 2 tasks, and 2 cpus per task in the job. Then we will use srun to spawn our parallel run, which should inherit the job geometry requested, except the cpus-per-task, which must be explicitly passed to srun.

    You can submit it with sbatch:

    No Format
    sbatch fractional.sh

    The job should be run shortly. When finished, a new file called fractional.out should appear in the same directory. You can check the relevant output with:

    No Format
    grep -v ECMWF-INFO fractional.out

    You should see an output similar to:

    No Format
    $ grep -v ECMWF-INFO fractional.out
    Host=ad6-202  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=0  CPU=  5  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=5,133
    Host=ad6-202  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=1  CPU=133  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=5,133
    Host=ad6-202  MPI Rank=1  OMP Thread=0  CPU=137  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=9,137
    Host=ad6-202  MPI Rank=1  OMP Thread=1  CPU=  9  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=9,137


    Info
    titleSrun automatic cpu binding

    You can see srun automatically does certain binding of the cores to the tasks, although perhaps not the best. If you were to instruct srun to avoid any cpu binding with --cpu-bind=none, you would see something like:

    No Format
    $ grep -v ECMWF-INFO fractional.out
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=0  CPU=136  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=1  CPU=  8  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=2  CPU=  8  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=0  OMP Thread=3  CPU=  4  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=1  OMP Thread=0  CPU=132  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=1  OMP Thread=1  CPU=  4  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=1  OMP Thread=2  CPU=132  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136
    Host=aa6-203  MPI Rank=1  OMP Thread=3  CPU=132  NUMA Node=0  CPU Affinity=4,8,132,136




  4. Can you ensure each one of those processes and threads runs on a single physical core, without exploiting the hyperthreading, for optimal performance?