OpenMPI v/s Mvapich2: MPI_Send without MPI_Recv

Question

I am trying to test the effects of MPI_Send without MPI_Recv. I have the following program which I compile and run using openmpi-1.4.5 and mvapich2-1.9. I am aware that these implementations are for 2 different versions of the MPI standard, but I think MPI_Send and MPI_Recv are same across these standards:

#include <mpi.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <assert.h>

using namespace std;

MPI_Comm ping_world;
int mpi_size, mpi_rank;

void* ping(void* args)
{
    int ctr = 0;
    while(1)
    {
            char buff[6] = "PING";
            ++ctr;
            for(int i=0; i<mpi_size; ++i)
            {
                    cout << "[" << ctr << "] Rank " << mpi_rank << " sending " << buff << " to rank " << i << endl;
                    MPI_Send(buff, 6, MPI_CHAR, i, 0, ping_world);
            }
    }
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int provided;
MPI_Init_thread(&argc, &argv, MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE, &provided);
assert(provided == MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE);

MPI_Comm_rank (MPI_COMM_WORLD, &mpi_rank);
MPI_Comm_size (MPI_COMM_WORLD, &mpi_size);

    {
            MPI_Group orig_group;
            MPI_Comm_group(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &orig_group);
            int ranks[mpi_size];
            for(int i=0; i<mpi_size; ++i)
                    ranks[i] = i;

            MPI_Group new_group;
            MPI_Group_incl(orig_group, mpi_size, ranks, &new_group);
            MPI_Comm_create(MPI_COMM_WORLD, new_group, &ping_world);
    }

pthread_t th_ping;
pthread_create(&th_ping, NULL, ping, (void *) NULL);

pthread_join(th_ping, NULL);

return 0;
}

With mvapich2, I always get the following output (nothing more than this). Basically, the program seems to have hanged after the 3 lines:

[1] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 0
[1] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0
[1] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 1

With openmpi, I get the following output (unending):

[1] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0
[1] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 1
[1] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 0
[1] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 1
[2] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 0
[2] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 1
[3] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 0
[3] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 1
[4] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 0
[4] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 1
[5] Rank 0 sending PING to rank 0
[2] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0
[2] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 1
[3] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0
[3] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 1
[4] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0
[4] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 1
[5] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0
[5] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 1
[6] Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0

Questions:

1. Why is there such a difference?
2. How do I achieve the behavior similar to openmpi (unending) using mvapich2?

Answer 1

MPI_Send can return when the buffer can be safely reused by the calling program. Nothing else is guaranteed, but there are many different implementation dependent behaviors. Different implementations can handle the buffering of messages differently. Eager protocols also allow for the transport of some short(er) messages to the receive rank without the need for a matching MPI_Recv to be posted.

If you need MPI to enforce the message being received before the blocking send returns, look at MPI_Ssend.

Answer 2

It's an incorrect MPI program to send data without receiving it. The problem you're seeing is that your sends aren't matching any receives. Depending on the implementation, MPI_SEND might block until the message is actually received on the other end. In fact, all implementations that I know of will do this for sufficiently large messages (though your message of 6 bytes probably isn't hitting that threshold anywhere).

If you want to send messages without blocking, you need to use MPI_ISEND. However, even for this, you need to eventually call MPI_TEST or MPI_WAIT to be sure that the data was actually send, rather than just being buffered locally.

I'm not sure about the specifics of why MVAPICH2 hangs while Open MPI doesn't, but in the end it doesn't really matter. You need to modify your program or you're just testing cases that shouldn't really be used anyway.

Answer 3

In MVAPICH2(and MPICH) implementation, the self blocking send is blocked(not buffered) until corresponding MPI_Recv is found. That is the reason it didn't hang at "Rank 1 sending PING to rank 0" It is just an implementation choice.