Working with Multiple MPIs: Overcoming ABI Incompatibility

Technical Report · Tue Apr 04 04:00:00 EDT 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2228566· OSTI ID:2228566

León, Edgar A. ^[1]; Joos, Marc ^[2]; Hanford, Nathan ^[1]; Fontenaille, Clement ^[3]; Cotte, Adrien ^[3]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
2. Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Saclay (France)
3. AS+ Groupe Eolen, Malakoff (France)

Scientific applications rely on third-party libraries, which may have multiple implementations. While sharing an application programming interface (API), many of these implementations do not have a shared application binary interface (ABI) and require recompiling. Recompiling can be a long and complex process and sometimes not even an option when the application is shipped binary only. ABI incompatibility strikes at the heart of portability, productivity, and performance by (1) impeding application execution across different HPC and Cloud systems; (2) adding developer hours rebuilding an application; and (3) not taking advantage of host-optimized libraries. This tutorial teaches attendees a portable way to address ABI incompatibility in MPI using the Wi4MPI library. Wi4MPI translates the ABI dynamically from the MPI library used to build the application to a different MPI library available at run time. With Wi4MPI, HPC practitioners can break the portability barrier imposed by ABI incompatibility, potentially increase performance, and increase user productivity. The tutorial is broken down in three components: (1) Understanding ABI compatibility in MPI; (2) Translating MPI libraries dynamically; and (3) Applying dynamic translation to key use cases in HPC, including Containers. If you use more than one MPI library or supercomputer, this tutorial is for you.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-07NA27344
• OSTI ID: 2228566
• Report Number(s): LLNL--TR-847128; 1071824
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING