GaspiCxx

GaspiCxx is a C++ interface for the GPI-2 communication library, which aims at providing a high-level abstraction layer on top of the native communication primitives. GaspiCxx is designed to achieve the following goals:

• scalability
• performance
• productivity

The interface design replaces the explicit management of communication resources required by the native GPI-2 interface with fully-transparent and easy-to-use primitives. The GaspiCxx API implements the following automatically managed resources:

• Groups
• Segments
• Queues
• Point-to-point single-sided communication primitives
  • SourceBuffer/TargetBuffers
• Non-blocking collective primitives
  • Allreduce
  • Allgatherv
  • Broadcast
• Blocking collectives
  • Barrier

Additionally, GaspiCxx provides a Python extension called PyGPI, which exposes the GaspiCxx point-to-point and collective primitives as an easy-to-use, intuitive Python library. More details regarding the installation and configuration of PyGPI can be found here.

Installation

Compiler and build system

GaspiCxx can be built using a recent compiler with support for C++17. It was tested with gcc starting from version 8.4.0 and clang 10.0.0. You will also need the build tool CMake (from version 3.12).

Step 1: Software dependencies

GaspiCxx depends on:

• GPI-2
• (Optional) Google test

Installing GPI-2

To install GPI-2, clone the following git repository and checkout the 1.5.1 tag:

git clone https://github.com/cc-hpc-itwm/GPI-2.git
cd GPI-2
git fetch --tags
git checkout -b v1.5.1 v1.5.1

Now, use autotools to configure and compile the code:

./autogen.sh
export GPI2_INSTALLATION_PATH=/your/installation/path
CFLAGS="-fPIC" CPPFLAGS="-fPIC" ./configure --with-infiniband --prefix=${GPI2_INSTALLATION_PATH}
make $nprocs

where ${GPI2_INSTALLATION_PATH} needs to be replaced with the path where you want to install GPI-2. Note the --with-infiniband option, which should be used on most HPC clusters that provide Infiniband support.

In case you want to install GPI-2 on a laptop or workstation, replace the above option with --with-ethernet, which will use standard TCP sockets for communication. Now you are ready to install GPI-2 with:

make install
export PATH=${GPI2_INSTALLATION_PATH}/bin:$PATH

Step 2: Build GaspiCxx

Compile and install the GaspiCxx library as follows:

git clone https://github.com/cc-hpc-itwm/GaspiCxx.git
cd GaspiCxx
mkdir build && cd build

export GASPICXX_INSTALLATION_PATH=/your/gaspicxx/installation/path
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${GASPICXX_INSTALLATION_PATH} ../
make -j$nprocs install

(Optional) Step 3: Run tests

Install Google Test

Download and install Google test from its GitHub repository.

export GTEST_INSTALLATION_PATH=/path/to/gtest

git clone https://github.com/google/googletest.git -b release-1.11.0
cd googletest
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${GTEST_INSTALLATION_PATH} ../
make -j$nprocs install

Compile GaspiCxx with testing enabled

export GASPICXX_INSTALLATION_PATH=/your/gaspicxx/installation/path
cmake -DENABLE_TESTS=ON                                      \
      -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=${GTEST_INSTALLATION_PATH}         \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${GASPICXX_INSTALLATION_PATH} ../
make -j$nprocs install

Run tests

GaspiCxx tests can be executed using the ctest command

# list tests
ctest -N

# run all tests
ctest

License

This project is licensed under the GPLv3.0 License - see the COPYING file for details