Sun Studio 12: Fortran Programming Guide

Chapter 10 Parallelization

This chapter presents an overview of multiprocessor parallelization and describes the capabilities of Fortran 95 on Solaris SPARC and x86 multiprocessor platforms.

See also Techniques for Optimizing Applications: High Performance Computing by Rajat Garg and Ilya Sharapov, a Sun Microsystems BluePrints publication (http://www.sun.com/blueprints/pubs.html)

10.1 Essential Concepts

Parallelizing (or multithreading) an application compiles the program to run on a multiprocessor system or in a multithreaded environment. Parallelization enables a single task, such as a DO loop, to run over multiple processors (or threads) with a potentially significant execution speedup.

Before an application program can be run efficiently on a multiprocessor system like the UltraTM 60, Sun EnterpriseTM Server 6500, or Sun Enterprise Server 10000, it needs to be multithreaded. That is, tasks that can be performed in parallel need to be identified and reprogrammed to distribute their computations across multiple processors or threads.

Multithreading an application can be done manually by making appropriate calls to the libthread primitives. However, a significant amount of analysis and reprogramming might be required. (See the Solaris Multithreaded Programming Guide for more information.)

Sun compilers can automatically generate multithreaded object code to run on multiprocessor systems. The Fortran compilers focus on DO loops as the primary language element supporting parallelism. Parallelization distributes the computational work of a loop over several processors without requiring modifications to the Fortran source program.

The choice of which loops to parallelize and how to distribute them can be left entirely up to the compiler (-autopar), specified explicitly by the programmer with source code directives (-explicitpar), or done in combination (-parallel).


Note –

Programs that do their own (explicit) thread management should not be compiled with any of the compiler’s parallelization options. Explicit multithreading (calls to libthread primitives) cannot be combined with routines compiled with these parallelization options.


Not all loops in a program can be profitably parallelized. Loops containing only a small amount of computational work (compared to the overhead spent starting and synchronizing parallel tasks) may actually run more slowly when parallelized. Also, some loops cannot be safely parallelized at all; they would compute different results when run in parallel due to dependencies between statements or iterations.

Implicit loops (IF loops and Fortran 95 array syntax, for example) as well as explicit DO loops are candidates for automatic parallelization by the Fortran compilers.

f95 can detect loops that might be safely and profitably parallelized automatically. However, in most cases, the analysis is necessarily conservative, due to the concern for possible hidden side effects. (A display of which loops were and were not parallelized can be produced by the -loopinfo option.) By inserting source code directives before loops, you can explicitly influence the analysis, controlling how a specific loop is (or is not) to be parallelized. However, it then becomes your responsibility to ensure that such explicit parallelization of a loop does not lead to incorrect results.

The Fortran 95 compiler provides explicit parallelization by implementing the OpenMP 2.0 Fortran API directives. For legacy programs, f95 also accepts the older Sun and Cray style directives, but use of these directives is now deprecated. OpenMP has become an informal standard for explicit parallelization in Fortran 95, C, and C++ and is recommended over the older directive styles.

For information on OpenMP, see the OpenMP API User’s Guide, or the OpenMP web site at http://www.openmp.org.

10.1.1 Speedups—What to Expect

If you parallelize a program so that it runs over four processors, can you expect it to take (roughly) one fourth the time that it did with a single processor (a fourfold speedup)?

Probably not. It can be shown (by Amdahl’s law) that the overall speedup of a program is strictly limited by the fraction of the execution time spent in code running in parallel. This is true no matter how many processors are applied. In fact, if p is the percentage of the total program execution time that runs in parallel mode, the theoretical speedup limit is 100/(100–p); therefore, if only 60% of a program’s execution runs in parallel, the maximum increase in speed is 2.5, independent of the number of processors. And with just four processors, the theoretical speedup for this program (assuming maximum efficiency) would be just 1.8 and not 4. With overhead, the actual speedup would be less.

As with any optimization, choice of loops is critical. Parallelizing loops that participate only minimally in the total program execution time has only minimal effect. To be effective, the loops that consume the major part of the runtime must be parallelized. The first step, therefore, is to determine which loops are significant and to start from there.

Problem size also plays an important role in determining the fraction of the program running in parallel and consequently the speedup. Increasing the problem size increases the amount of work done in loops. A triply nested loop could see a cubic increase in work. If the outer loop in the nest is parallelized, a small increase in problem size could contribute to a significant performance improvement (compared to the unparallelized performance).

10.1.2 Steps to Parallelizing a Program

Here is a very general outline of the steps needed to parallelize an application:

  1. Optimize. Use the appropriate set of compiler options to get the best serial performance on a single processor.

  2. Profile. Using typical test data, determine the performance profile of the program. Identify the most significant loops.

  3. Benchmark. Determine that the serial test results are accurate. Use these results and the performance profile as the benchmark.

  4. Parallelize. Use a combination of options and directives to compile and build a parallelized executable.

  5. Verify. Run the parallelized program on a single processor and single thread and check results to find instabilities and programming errors that might have crept in. (Set $PARALLEL or $OMP_NUM_THREADS to 1; see 10.1.5 Number of Threads).

  6. Test. Make various runs on several processors to check results.

  7. Benchmark. Make performance measurements with various numbers of processors on a dedicated system. Measure performance changes with changes in problem size (scalability).

  8. Repeat steps 4 to 7. Make improvements to your parallelization scheme based on performance.

10.1.3 Data Dependence Issues

Not all loops are parallelizable. Running a loop in parallel over a number of processors usually results in iterations executing out of order. Moreover, the multiple processors executing the loop in parallel may interfere with each other whenever there are data dependencies in the loop.

Situations where data dependence issues arise include recurrence, reduction, indirect addressing, and data dependent loop iterations.

10.1.3.1 Data Dependent Loops

You might be able to rewrite a loop to eliminate data dependencies, making it parallelizable. However, extensive restructuring could be needed.

Some general rules are:

These are general conditions for parallelization. The compilers’ automatic parallelization analysis considers additional criteria when deciding whether to parallelize a loop. However, you can use directives to explicitly force loops to be parallelized, even loops that contain inhibitors and produce incorrect results.

10.1.3.2 Recurrence

Variables that are set in one iteration of a loop and used in a subsequent iteration introduce cross-iteration dependencies, or recurrences. Recurrence in a loop requires that the iterations to be executed in the proper order. For example:


   DO I=2,N
      A(I) = A(I-1)*B(I)+C(I)
   END DO

requires the value computed for A(I) in the previous iteration to be used (as A(I-1)) in the current iteration. To produce correct results, iteration I must complete before iteration I+1 can execute.

10.1.3.3 Reduction

Reduction operations reduce the elements of an array into a single value. For example, summing the elements of an array into a single variable involves updating that variable in each iteration:


   DO K = 1,N
     SUM = SUM + A(I)*B(I)
   END DO

If each processor running this loop in parallel takes some subset of the iterations, the processors will interfere with each other, overwriting the value in SUM. For this to work, each processor must execute the summation one at a time, although the order is not significant.

Certain common reduction operations are recognized and handled as special cases by the compiler.

10.1.3.4 Indirect Addressing

Loop dependencies can result from stores into arrays that are indexed in the loop by subscripts whose values are not known. For example, indirect addressing could be order dependent if there are repeated values in the index array:


   DO L = 1,NW
     A(ID(L)) = A(L) + B(L)
   END DO

In the example, repeated values in ID cause elements in A to be overwritten. In the serial case, the last store is the final value. In the parallel case, the order is not determined. The values of A(L) that are used, old or updated, are order dependent.

10.1.4 Compiling for Parallelization

The Sun Studio compilers support the OpenMP parallelization model natively as the primary parallelization model. For information on OpenMP parallelization, see the OpenMP API User’s Guide. Sun and Cray-style parallelization refer to legacy applications and are no longer supported by current Sun Studio compilers.

.

Table 10–1 Fortran 95 Parallelization Options

Option  

Flag  

Automatic (only)

-autopar

Automatic and Reduction 

-autopar -reduction

Show which loops are parallelized 

-loopinfo

Show warnings with explicit 

-vpara

Allocate local variables on stack 

-stackvar

Compile for OpenMP parallelization 

-xopenmp

Notes on these options:

10.1.5 Number of Threads

The PARALLEL (or OMP_NUM_THREADS) environment variable controls the maximum number of threads available to the program. Setting the environment variable tells the runtime system the maximum number of threads the program can use. The default is 1. In general, set the PARALLEL or OMP_NUM_THREADS variable to the number of available virtual processors on the target platform.

The following example shows how to set it:


demo% setenv OMP_NUM_THREADS 4       C shell

-or-


demo$ OMP_NUM_THREADS=4               Bourne/Korn shell
demo$ export OMP_NUM_THREADS

In this example, setting PARALLEL to four enables the execution of a program using at most four threads. If the target machine has four processors available, the threads will map to independent processors. If there are fewer than four processors available, some threads could run on the same processor as others, possibly degrading performance.

The SunOSTM operating system command psrinfo(1M) displays a list of the processors available on a system:


demo% psrinfo
0      on-line   since 03/18/2007 15:51:03
1      on-line   since 03/18/2007 15:51:03
2      on-line   since 03/18/2007 15:51:03
3      on-line   since 03/18/2007 15:51:03

10.1.6 Stacks, Stack Sizes, and Parallelization

The executing program maintains a main memory stack for the initial thread executing the program, as well as distinct stacks for each helper thread. Stacks are temporary memory address spaces used to hold arguments and AUTOMATIC variables over subprogram invocations.

The default size of the main stack is about 8 megabytes. The Fortran compilers normally allocate local variables and arrays as STATIC (not on the stack). However, the -stackvar option forces the allocation of all local variables and arrays on the stack (as if they were AUTOMATIC variables). Use of -stackvar is recommended with parallelization because it improves the optimizer’s ability to parallelize subprogram calls in loops. -stackvar is required with explicitly parallelized loops containing subprogram calls. (See the discussion of -stackvar in the Fortran User’s Guide.)

Using the C shell (csh), the limit command displays the current main stack size as well as sets it:


demo% limit             C shell example
cputime       unlimited
filesize       unlimited
datasize       2097148 kbytes
stacksize       8192 kbytes            <- current main stack size
coredumpsize       0 kbytes
descriptors       64
memorysize       unlimited
demo% limit stacksize 65536       <- set main stack to 64Mb
demo% limit stacksize
stacksize       65536 kbytes

With Bourne or Korn shells, the corresponding command is ulimit:


demo$ ulimit -a         Korn Shell example
time(seconds)        unlimited
file(blocks)         unlimited
data(kbytes)         2097148
stack(kbytes)        8192
coredump(blocks)     0
nofiles(descriptors) 64
vmemory(kbytes)      unlimited
demo$ ulimit -s 65536
demo$ ulimit -s
65536

Each helper thread of a multithreaded program has its own thread stack. This stack mimics the initial thread stack but is unique to the thread. The thread’s PRIVATE arrays and variables (local to the thread) are allocated on the thread stack. The default size is 8 megabytes on 64–bit SPARC and 64-bit x86 platforms, 4 megabytes otherwise. The size is set with the STACKSIZE environment variable:


demo% setenv STACKSIZE 8192    <- Set thread stack size to 8 Mb    C shell
                          -or-
demo$ STACKSIZE=8192           Bourne/Korn Shell
demo$ export STACKSIZE

Setting the thread stack size to a value larger than the default may be necessary for some parallelized Fortran codes. However, it may not be possible to know just how large it should be, except by trial and error, especially if private/local arrays are involved. If the stack size is too small for a thread to run, the program will abort with a segmentation fault.

10.2 Automatic Parallelization

With the -autopar option, the f95 compiler automatically finds DO loops that can be parallelized effectively. These loops are then transformed to distribute their iterations evenly over the available processors. The compiler generates the thread calls needed to make this happen.

10.2.1 Loop Parallelization

The compiler’s dependency analysis transforms a DO loop into a parallelizable task. The compiler may restructure the loop to split out unparallelizable sections that will run serially. It then distributes the work evenly over the available processors. Each processor executes a different chunk of iterations.

For example, with four CPUs and a parallelized loop with 1000 iterations, each thread would execute a chunk of 250 iterations:

Processor 1 executes iterations 

through 

250 

Processor 2 executes iterations 

251 

through 

500 

Processor 3 executes iterations 

501 

through 

750 

Processor 4 executes iterations 

751 

through 

1000 

Only loops that do not depend on the order in which the computations are performed can be successfully parallelized. The compiler’s dependence analysis rejects from parallelization those loops with inherent data dependencies. If it cannot fully determine the data flow in a loop, the compiler acts conservatively and does not parallelize. Also, it may choose not to parallelize a loop if it determines the performance gain does not justify the overhead.

Note that the compiler always chooses to parallelize loops using a static loop scheduling—simply dividing the work in the loop into equal blocks of iterations. Other scheduling schemes may be specified using explicit parallelization directives described later in this chapter.

10.2.2 Arrays, Scalars, and Pure Scalars

A few definitions, from the point of view of automatic parallelization, are needed:

Example: Array/scalar:


      dimension a(10)
      real m(100,10), s, u, x, z
      equivalence ( u, z )
      pointer ( px, x )
      s = 0.0
      ...

Both m and a are array variables; s is pure scalar. The variables u, x, z, and px are scalar variables, but not pure scalars.

10.2.3 Automatic Parallelization Criteria

DO loops that have no cross-iteration data dependencies are automatically parallelized by -autopar. The general criteria for automatic parallelization are:

10.2.3.1 Apparent Dependencies

The compilers may automatically eliminate a reference that appears to create a data dependence in the loop. One of the many such transformations makes use of private versions of some of the arrays. Typically, the compiler does this if it can determine that such arrays are used in the original loops only as temporary storage.

Example: Using -autopar, with dependencies eliminated by private arrays:


      parameter (n=1000)
      real a(n), b(n), c(n,n)
      do i = 1, 1000             <--Parallelized
        do k = 1, n
          a(k) = b(k) + 2.0
        end do
        do j = 1, n-1
          c(i,j) = a(j+1) + 2.3
        end do
      end do
      end

In the example, the outer loop is parallelized and run on independent processors. Although the inner loop references to array a appear to result in a data dependence, the compiler generates temporary private copies of the array to make the outer loop iterations independent.

10.2.3.2 Inhibitors to Automatic Parallelization

Under automatic parallelization, the compilers do not parallelize a loop if:

10.2.3.3 Nested Loops

In a multithreaded, multiprocessor environment, it is most effective to parallelize the outermost loop in a loop nest, rather than the innermost. Because parallel processing typically involves relatively large loop overhead, parallelizing the outermost loop minimizes the overhead and maximizes the work done for each thread. Under automatic parallelization, the compilers start their loop analysis from the outermost loop in a nest and work inward until a parallelizable loop is found. Once a loop within the nest is parallelized, loops contained within the parallel loop are passed over.

10.2.4 Automatic Parallelization With Reduction Operations

A computation that transforms an array into a scalar is called a reduction operation. Typical reduction operations are the sum or product of the elements of a vector. Reduction operations violate the criterion that calculations within a loop not change a scalar variable in a cumulative way across iterations.

Example: Reduction summation of the elements of a vector:


      s = 0.0
      do i = 1, 1000
        s = s + v(i)
      end do
      t(k) = s

However, for some operations, if reduction is the only factor that prevents parallelization, it is still possible to parallelize the loop. Common reduction operations occur so frequently that the compilers are capable of recognizing and parallelizing them as special cases.

Recognition of reduction operations is not included in the automatic parallelization analysis unless the -reduction compiler option is specified along with -autopar or -parallel.

If a parallelizable loop contains one of the reduction operations listed in Table 10–2, the compiler will parallelize it if -reduction is specified.

10.2.4.1 Recognized Reduction Operations

The following table lists the reduction operations that are recognized by the compiler.

Table 10–2 Recognized Reduction Operations

Mathematical Operations  

Fortran Statement Templates  

Sum 

s = s + v(i)

Product 

s = s * v(i)

Dot product 

s = s + v(i) * u(i)

Minimum 

s = amin( s, v(i))

Maximum 

s = amax( s, v(i))

OR

do i = 1, n

b = b .or. v(i)

end do

AND

b = .true.

do i = 1, n

b = b .and. v(i)

end do

Count of non-zero elements 

k = 0

do i = 1, n

if(v(i).ne.0) k = k + 1

end do

All forms of the MIN and MAX function are recognized.

10.2.4.2 Numerical Accuracy and Reduction Operations

Floating-point sum or product reduction operations may be inaccurate due to the following conditions:

In some situations, the error may not be acceptable.

Example: Roundoff, get the sum of 100,000 random numbers between– 1 and +1:


demo% cat t4.f
      parameter ( n = 100000 )
      double precision d_lcrans, lb / -1.0 /, s, ub / +1.0 /, v(n)
      s = d_lcrans ( v, n, lb, ub ) ! Get n random nos. between -1 and +1
      s = 0.0
      do i = 1, n
        s = s + v(i)
      end do
      write(*, ’(" s = ", e21.15)’) s
      end
demo% f95 -O4 -autopar -reduction t4.f

Results vary with the number of processors. The following table shows the sum of 100,000 random numbers between– 1 and +1.

Number of Processors  

Output  

s = 0.568582080884714E+02

s = 0.568582080884722E+02

s = 0.568582080884721E+02

s = 0.568582080884724E+02

In this situation, roundoff error on the order of 10-14 is acceptable for data that is random to begin with. For more information, see the Sun Numerical Computation Guide.

10.3 Explicit Parallelization

This section describes the source code directives recognized by f95 to explicitly indicate which loops to parallelize and what strategy to use.

The Fortran 95 compiler now fully supports the OpenMP Fortran API as the primary parallelization model. See the OpenMP API User’s Guide for additional information..

Legacy Sun-style and Cray-style parallelization directives are no longer supported by Sun Studio compilers on SPARC platforms, and are not accepted by the compilers on x86 platforms.

Explicit parallelization of a program requires prior analysis and deep understanding of the application code as well as the concepts of shared-memory parallelization.

DO loops are marked for parallelization by directives placed immediately before them. Compile with -xopenmp to enable recognition of OpenMP Fortran 95 directives and generation of parallelized DO loop code. Parallelization directives are comment lines that tell the compiler to parallelize (or not to parallelize) the DO loop that follows the directive. Directives are also called pragmas.

Take care when choosing which loops to mark for parallelization. The compiler generates threaded, parallel code for all loops marked with parallelization directives, even if there are data dependencies that will cause the loop to compute incorrect results when run in parallel.

If you do your own multithreaded coding using the libthread primitives, do not use any of the compilers’ parallelization options—the compilers cannot parallelize code that has already been parallelized with user calls to the threads library.

10.3.1 Parallelizable Loops

A loop is appropriate for explicit parallelization if:

10.3.1.1 Scoping Rules: Private and Shared

A private variable or array is private to a single iteration of a loop. The value assigned to a private variable or array in one iteration is not propagated to any other iteration of the loop.

A shared variable or array is shared with all other iterations. The value assigned to a shared variable or array in an iteration is seen by other iterations of the loop.

If an explicitly parallelized loop contains shared references, then you must ensure that sharing does not cause correctness problems. The compiler does not synchronize on updates or accesses to shared variables.

If you specify a variable as private in one loop, and its only initialization is within some other loop, the value of that variable may be left undefined in the loop.

10.3.1.2 Subprogram Call in a Loop

A subprogram call in a loop (or in any subprograms called from within the called routine) may introduce data dependencies that could go unnoticed without a deep analysis of the data and control flow through the chain of calls. While it is best to parallelize outermost loops that do a significant amount of the work, these tend to be the very loops that involve subprogram calls.

Because such an interprocedural analysis is difficult and could greatly increase compilation time, automatic parallelization modes do not attempt it. With explicit parallelization, the compiler generates parallelized code for a loop marked with a PARALLEL DO or DOALL directive even if it contains calls to subprograms. It is still the programmer’s responsibility to insure that no data dependencies exist within the loop and all that the loop encloses, including called subprograms.

Multiple invocations of a routine by different threads can cause problems resulting from references to local static variables that interfere with each other. Making all the local variables in a routine automatic rather than static prevents this. Each invocation of a subprogram then has its own unique store of local variables maintained on the stack, and no two invocations will interfere with each other.

Local subprogram variables can be made automatic variables that reside on the stack either by listing them on an AUTOMATIC statement or by compiling the subprogram with the -stackvar option. However, local variables initialized in DATA statements must be rewritten to be initialized in actual assignments.


Note –

Allocating local variables to the stack can cause stack overflow. See 10.1.6 Stacks, Stack Sizes, and Parallelization about increasing the size of the stack.


10.3.1.3 Inhibitors to Explicit Parallelization

In general, the compiler parallelizes a loop if you explicitly direct it to. There are exceptions—some loops the compiler will not parallelize.

The following are the primary detectable inhibitors that might prevent explicitly parallelizing a DO loop:

By compiling with -vpara and -loopinfo, you will get diagnostic messages if the compiler detects a problem while explicitly parallelizing a loop.

The following table lists typical parallelization problems detected by the compiler:

Table 10–3 Explicit Parallelization Problems

Problem  

Parallelized  

Warning Message  

Loop is nested inside another loop that is parallelized. 

No 

No 

Loop is in a subroutine called within the body of a parallelized loop. 

No 

No 

Jumping out of loop is allowed by a flow control statement. 

No 

Yes 

Index variable of loop is subject to side effects. 

Yes 

No 

Some variable in the loop has a loop-carried dependency. 

Yes 

Yes 

I/O statement in the loop—usually unwise, because the order of the output is not predictable.

Yes 

No 

Example: Nested loops:


      ...
!$OMP PARALLEL DO
      do 900 i = 1, 1000      !  Parallelized (outer loop)
        do 200 j = 1, 1000    !  Not parallelized, no warning
            ...
200   continue
900      continue
      ...

Example: A parallelized loop in a subroutine:


 program main
      ...
!$OMP PARALLEL DO
      do 100 i = 1, 200      <-parallelized
        ...
        call calc (a, x)
        ...
100      continue
      ...
subroutine calc ( b, y )
      ...
!$OMP PARALLEL DO
      do 1 m = 1, 1000       <-not parallelized
        ...
1      continue
      return
      end

In the example, the loop within the subroutine is not parallelized because the subroutine itself is run in parallel.

Example: Jumping out of a loop:


!$omp parallel do
      do i = 1, 1000     ! <- Not parallelized, error issued
        ...
        if (a(i) .gt. min_threshold ) go to 20
        ...
      end do
20      continue
      ...

The compiler issues an error diagnostic if there is a jump outside a loop marked for parallelization.

Example: A variable in a loop has a loop-carried dependency:


demo% cat vpfn.f
      real function fn (n,x,y,z)
      real y(*),x(*),z(*)
      s = 0.0
!$omp parallel do private(i,s) shared(x,y,z)
      do  i = 1, n
          x(i) = s
          s = y(i)*z(i)
      enddo
      fn=x(10)
      return
      end
demo% f95 -c -vpara -loopinfo -openmp -O4 vpfn.f
"vpfn.f", line 5: Warning: the loop may have parallelization inhibiting reference
"vpfn.f", line 5: PARALLELIZED, user pragma used

Here the loop is parallelized but the possible loop carried dependency is diagnosed in a warning. However, be aware that not all loop dependencies can be diagnosed by the compiler.

10.3.1.4 I/O With Explicit Parallelization

You can do I/O in a loop that executes in parallel, provided that:

Example: I/O statement in loop


!$OMP PARALLEL DO PRIVATE(k)
      do i = 1, 10     !  Parallelized
        k = i
        call show ( k )
      end do
      end
      subroutine show( j )
      write(6,1) j
1      format(’Line number ’, i3, ’.’)
      end
demo% f95 -openmp t13.f
demo% setenv PARALLEL 4
demo% a.out

Line number 9.
Line number 4.
Line number 5.
Line number 6.
Line number 1.
Line number 2.
Line number 3.
Line number 7.
Line number 8.

However, I/O that is recursive, where an I/O statement contains a call to a function that itself does I/O, will cause a runtime error.

10.3.2 OpenMP Parallelization Directives

OpenMP is a parallel programming model for multi-processor platforms that is becoming standard programming practice for Fortran 95, C, and C++ applications. It is the preferred parallel programming model for Sun Studio compilers.

To enable OpenMP directives, compile with the -openmp option flag. Fortran 95 OpenMP directives are identified with the comment-like sentinel !$OMP followed by the directive name and subordinate clauses.

The !$OMP PARALLEL directive identifies the parallel regions in a program. The !$OMP DO directive identifies DO loops within a parallel region that are to be parallelized. These directives can be combined into a single !$OMP PARALLEL DO directive that must be placed immediately before the DO loop.

The OpenMP specification includes a number of directives for sharing and synchronizing work in a parallel region of a program, and subordinate clauses for data scoping and control.

One major difference between OpenMP and legacy Sun-style directives is that OpenMP requires explicit data scoping as either private or shared, but and automatic scoping feature is provided.

For more information, including guidelines for converting legacy programs using Sun and Cray parallelization directives, see the OpenMP API User’s Guide.

10.4 Environment Variables

There are a number of environment variables used with parallelization: OMP_NUM_THREADS, SUNW_MP_WARN, SUNW_MP_THR_IDLE, SUNW_MP_PROCBIND, STACKSIZE, and others. They are described in the OpenMP API User’s Guide.

10.5 Debugging Parallelized Programs

Fortran source code:


    real x / 1.0 /, y / 0.0 /
    print *, x/y
    end
    character  string*5, out*20
    double precision value
    external exception_handler
    i = ieee_handler(’set’, ’all’, exception_handler)
    string = ’1e310’
    print *, ’Input string ’, string, ’ becomes: ’, value
    print *, ’Value of 1e300 * 1e10 is:’, 1e300 * 1e10
    i = ieee_flags(’clear’, ’exception’, ’all’, out)
    end

    integer function exception_handler(sig, code, sigcontext)
    integer sig, code, sigcontext(5)
    print *, ’*** IEEE exception raised!’
    return
    end

Runtime output:


*** IEEE exception raised!
 Input string 1e310 becomes:  Infinity
 Value of 1e300 * 1e10 is: Inf
 Note: Following IEEE floating-point traps enabled;
   see ieee_handler(3M):
 Inexact;  Underflow;  Overflow;  Division by Zero;  Invalid
   Operand;
 Sun’s implementation of IEEE arithmetic is discussed in
  the Numerical Computation Guide.
Debugging Parallelized Programs

Debugging parallelized programs requires some extra effort. The following schemes suggest ways to approach this task.

10.5.1 First Steps at Debugging

There are some steps you can try immediately to determine the cause of errors.

Replace:


    DO I=1,N
      ...
      CALL SNUBBER(I)
      ...
    ENDDO

With:


      DO I1=1,N
      I=I1
      ...
      CALL SNUBBER(I)
      ...
    ENDDO

10.6 Further Reading

The following provide more information: