MPI-based Producer-Consumer Simulation

This project simulates a producer-consumer system using MPI (Message Passing Interface) in C, where producers generate work items and send them to a broker, which then distributes them to consumers.

Overview

The program consists of three main components:

• Producer: Each producer generates work and sends it to the broker.
• Broker: The broker receives work from producers and dispatches it to consumers upon request.
• Consumer: Each consumer requests work from the broker and processes the received work.

This simulation demonstrates basic principles of parallel computing and communication using MPI.

Features

• Asynchronous Communication: The program uses non-blocking MPI operations (MPI_Isend and MPI_Recv) to send and receive messages between processes.
• Time Management: The broker checks the elapsed time during communication and can abort the process if it exceeds a predefined threshold.
• Work Production and Consumption: Producers generate work based on a formula and send it to the broker. Consumers request and process work from the broker.
• Synchronization: The program synchronizes communication between producers, consumers, and the broker using MPI.

Requirements

• MPI Library: You need to have an MPI implementation installed. For example, you can install OpenMPI or MPICH.
• C Compiler: A C compiler like GCC is required to compile the code.

Compilation and Execution

1. Install MPI: Ensure that you have an MPI library installed. For OpenMPI, you can install it on Linux systems using:

   sudo apt-get install openmpi-bin openmpi-common libopenmpi-dev
   
   

2. Compile the Program: Use the mpicc compiler to compile the code:

   mpicc -o producer_consumer producer_consumer.c

3. Run the Program: Use mpirun or mpiexec to run the program with multiple processes. For example, to run with 4 processes:

   mpirun -np 4 ./producer_consumer <time_threshold>

   Where <time_threshold> is the time limit (in seconds) after which the broker will abort the communication.

Program Flow

1. Producers generate work units and send them to the broker.
2. Broker receives work from producers and stores it. The broker then sends work to consumers upon request.
3. Consumers request work from the broker, process the work, and continue until the communication time limit is reached or all work is consumed.

Variables and Functions

• time_rec: Defines the time threshold (in seconds) after which the broker sends an "ABORT" message to the processes.
• MPI_Isend and MPI_Recv: Used for asynchronous communication between producers, the broker, and consumers.
• MPI_Waitany: Waits for any of the non-blocking send/receive operations to complete.

Example Output

For producers:

Producer 1 sent message 5 to Broker
Producer 1 received message ACK from Broker

For consumers:

Consumer 2 sent message Req to Broker
Consumer 2 received message 7 from Broker