parmap

This small python module implements four functions: map and starmap, and their async versions map_async and starmap_async.

What does parmap offer?

• Provide an easy to use syntax for both map and starmap.
• Parallelize transparently whenever possible.
• Pass additional positional and keyword arguments to parallelized functions.
• Show a progress bar (requires tqdm as optional package)

Installation:

 pip install tqdm # for progress bar support
 pip install parmap

Usage:

Here are some examples with some unparallelized code parallelized with parmap:

Simple parallelization example:

import parmap
# You want to do:
mylist = [1,2,3]
argument1 = 3.14
argument2 = True
y = [myfunction(x, argument1, mykeyword=argument2) for x in mylist]
# In parallel:
y = parmap.map(myfunction, mylist, argument1, mykeyword=argument2)

Show a progress bar:

Requires pip install tqdm

# You want to do:
y = [myfunction(x) for x in mylist]
# In parallel, with a progress bar
y = parmap.map(myfunction, mylist, pm_pbar=True)
# Passing extra options to the tqdm progress bar
y = parmap.map(myfunction, mylist, pm_pbar={"desc": "Example"})

Passing multiple arguments:

# You want to do:
z = [myfunction(x, y, argument1, argument2, mykey=argument3) for (x,y) in mylist]
# In parallel:
z = parmap.starmap(myfunction, mylist, argument1, argument2, mykey=argument3)

# You want to do:
listx = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
listy = [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
param = 3.14
param2 = 42
listz = []
for (x, y) in zip(listx, listy):
    listz.append(myfunction(x, y, param1, param2))
# In parallel:
listz = parmap.starmap(myfunction, zip(listx, listy), param1, param2)

Advanced: Multiple parallel tasks running in parallel

In this example, Task1 uses 5 cores, while Task2 uses 3 cores. Both tasks start to compute simultaneously, and we print a message as soon as any of the tasks finishes, retreiving the result.

import parmap
def task1(item):
    return 2*item

def task2(item):
    return 2*item + 1

items1 = range(500000)
items2 = range(500)

with parmap.map_async(task1, items1, pm_processes=5) as result1:
    with parmap.map_async(task2, items2, pm_processes=3) as result2:
        data_task1 = None
        data_task2 = None
        task1_working = True
        task2_working = True
        while task1_working or task2_working:
            result1.wait(0.1)
            if task1_working and result1.ready():
                print("Task 1 has finished!")
                data_task1 = result1.get()
                task1_working = False
            result2.wait(0.1)
            if task2_working and result2.ready():
                print("Task 2 has finished!")
                data_task2 = result2.get()
                task2_working = False
#Further work with data_task1 or data_task2

map and starmap already exist. Why reinvent the wheel?

The existing functions have some usability limitations:

• The built-in python function map¹ is not able to parallelize.
• multiprocessing.Pool().map² does not allow any additional argument to the mapped function.
• multiprocessing.Pool().starmap allows passing multiple arguments, but in order to pass a constant argument to the mapped function you will need to convert it to an iterator using itertools.repeat(your_parameter)³

parmap aims to overcome this limitations in the simplest possible way.

Additional features in parmap:

• Create a pool for parallel computation automatically if possible.
• parmap.map(..., ..., pm_parallel=False) # disables parallelization
• parmap.map(..., ..., pm_processes=4) # use 4 parallel processes
• parmap.map(..., ..., pm_pbar=True) # show a progress bar (requires tqdm)
• parmap.map(..., ..., pm_pool=multiprocessing.Pool()) # use an existing pool, in this case parmap will not close the pool.
• parmap.map(..., ..., pm_chunksize=3) # size of chunks (see multiprocessing.Pool().map)

Limitations:

parmap.map() and parmap.starmap() (and their async versions) have their own arguments (pm_parallel, pm_pbar...). Those arguments are never passed to the underlying function. In the following example, myfun will receive myargument, but not pm_parallel. Do not write functions that require keyword arguments starting with pm_, as parmap may need them in the future.

parmap.map(myfun, mylist, pm_parallel=True, myargument=False)

Additionally, there are other keyword arguments that should be avoided in the functions you write, because of parmap backwards compatibility reasons. The list of conflicting arguments is: parallel, chunksize, pool, processes, callback, error_callback and parmap_progress.

Acknowledgments:

This package started after this question, when I offered this answer, taking the suggestions of J.F. Sebastian for his answer

Known works using parmap

• Davide Gerosa, Michael Kesden, "PRECESSION. Dynamics of spinning black-hole binaries with python." arXiv:1605.01067, 2016

• Thibault de Boissiere, Implementation of Deep learning papers, 2017

  • Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks arXiv:1701.07875
  • pix2pix arXiv:1611.07004
  • Improved Techniques for Training Generative Adversarial Networks arXiv:1606.03498
  • Colorful Image Colorization arXiv:1603.08511
  • Deep Feature Interpolation for Image Content Changes arXiv:1611.05507
  • InfoGAN arXiv:1606.03657

• Geoscience Australia, SIFRA, a System for Infrastructure Facility Resilience Analysis, 2017
• André F. Rendeiro, Christian Schmidl, Jonathan C. Strefford, Renata Walewska, Zadie Davis, Matthias Farlik, David Oscier, Christoph Bock "Chromatin accessibility maps of chronic lymphocytic leukemia identify subtype-specific epigenome signatures and transcription regulatory networks" Nat. Commun. 7:11938 doi: 10.1038/ncomms11938 (2016). Paper, Code

References

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1. http://docs.python.org/dev/library/functions.html#map↩

2. http://docs.python.org/dev/library/multiprocessing.html#multiprocessing.pool.Pool.map↩

3. http://docs.python.org/dev/library/itertools.html#itertools.repeat↩