4.1. Message Passing Pattern: Key Problem

The following code represents a common error that many programmers have inadvertently placed in their code. The concept behind this program is that we wish to use communication between pairs of processes, like this:

../_images/pair_exchange.png

For message passing to work between a pair of processes, one must send and the other must receive. If we wish to exchange data, then each process will need to perform both a send and a receive. The idea is that process 0 will send data to process 1, who will receive it from process 0. Process 1 will also send some data to process 0, who will receive it from process 1. Similarly, processes 2 and 3 will exchange messages: process 2 will send data to process 3, who will receive it from process 2. Process 3 will also send some data to process 2, who will receive it from process 3.

If we have more processes, we still want to pair up processes together to exchange messages. The mechanism for doing this is to know your process id. If your id is odd (1, 3 in the above diagram), you will send and receive from your neighbor whose id is id - 1. If your id is even (0, 2), you will send and receive from your neighbor whose id is id + 1. This should work even if we add more than 4 processes, as long as the number of processes is divisible by 2.

Warning

There is a problem with the following code called deadlock. This happens when every process is waiting on an action from another process. The program cannot complete. On linux systems such as the Raspberry Pi, type ctrl-c together to stop the program (ctrl means the control key).

Program file: 04messagePassingDeadlock.py

Example usage:

python run.py ./04messagePassingDeadlock.py 4

Here the 4 signifies the number of processes to start up in mpi.

run.py executes this program within mpirun using the number of processes given.

Exercise:

4.1.1. Explore the code

In this code, can you trace what is happening to cause the deadlock?

from mpi4py import MPI

# function to return whether a number of a process is odd or even
def odd(number):
    if (number % 2) == 0:
        return False
    else :
        return True

def main():
    comm = MPI.COMM_WORLD
    id = comm.Get_rank()            #number of the process running the code
    numProcesses = comm.Get_size()  #total number of processes running
    myHostName = MPI.Get_processor_name()  #machine name running the code

    if numProcesses > 1 and not odd(numProcesses):
        sendValue = id
        if odd(id):
            #odd processes receive from their paired 'neighbor', then send
            receivedValue = comm.recv(source=id-1)
            comm.send(sendValue, dest=id-1)
        else :
            #even processes receive from their paired 'neighbor', then send
            receivedValue = comm.recv(source=id+1)
            comm.send(sendValue, dest=id+1)

        print("Process {} of {} on {} computed {} and received {}"\
        .format(id, numProcesses, myHostName, sendValue, receivedValue))

    else :
        if id == 0:
            print("Please run this program with the number of processes \
positive and even")

########## Run the main function
main()

Can you think of how to fix this problem?

Go to the next example to see the solution.

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