Is it beneficial to parallelize variable declaration? - c

I wonder if it is beneficial when writing a parallel program to insert variables declarations into the parallel section? Because the Amdahl's law says that if more portion of the program is parallel it's better but I don't see the point to parallelize variables declaration and return statements, for example, this is the normal parallel code:
#include <omp.h>
int main(void) {
int a = 0;
int b[5];
#pragma omp parallel
{
#pragma omp for
for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i) {
b[i] = a;
}
}
return 0;
}
Will it be beneficial regarding Amdahl's law to write this (so 100% of the program is parallel):
#include <omp.h>
int main(void) {
#pragma omp parallel
{
int a = 0;
int b[5];
#pragma omp for
for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i) {
b[i] = a;
}
return 0;
}
}

These codes are not equivalent: in the first case, a and b are shared variables (since shared is the default behavior for variables), in the second case these are thread-private variables that do not exist beyond the scope of the parallel region.
Besides, the return statement within the parallel region in the second piece of code is illegal and must cause a compilation error.
As seen for instance in this OpenMP 4.0 reference card
An OpenMP executable directive applies to the succeeding structured
block or an OpenMP construct. Each directive starts with #pragma omp.
The remainder of the directive follows the conventions of the C and
C++ standards for compiler directives. A structured-block is a single
statement or a compound statement with a single entry at the top and a
single exit at the bottom.
A block that contains the return statement is not a structured-block since it does not have a single exit at the bottom (i.e. the closing brace } is not the only exit since return is another one). It may not legally follow the #pragma omp parallel directive.

Related

Recursive task creation results in segmentation fault in OpenMP

I am trying to implement a nqueens solver with OpenMP, my serial code works fine but when I try to do task parallelism on that, I get segmentation fault or empty rows/cols.
Here is my implementation:
#define N 8
bool SOLUTION_EXISTS = false; // THIS IS GLOBAL
bool solve_NQueens(int board[N][N], int col)
{
if (col == N)
{
#pragma omp critical
print_solution(board);
SOLUTION_EXISTS = true;
return true;
}
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
if (can_be_placed(board, i, col) )
{
#pragma omp taskgroup
{
#pragma omp task private(col) shared(i) firstprivate(board)
{
board[i][col] = 1;
SOLUTION_EXISTS = solve_NQueens(board, col + 1) || SOLUTION_EXISTS;
board[i][col] = 0;
}
}
}
}
return SOLUTION_EXISTS;
}
And the first call to this function is:
#pragma omp parallel
{
#pragma omp single
{
solve_NQueens(board, 0);
}
}
When I make col private, it gives a segmentation fault. If I do not put any variable scope, ambiguous and wrong solutions are printed.
And I am using gcc 4.8.5
Solution
There is a segmentation fault because you use private(col). Thus, col is not copied from your function and not even initialized. Use firstprivate(col) to make a proper copy of col.
Advise
omp taskgroup will make your code run in sequential since there is an implicit barrier at the end of the scope. It is probably better to avoid it (eg. by using an omp taskwait at the end of the loop and changing a bit the rest of the code).
If you want to change that, please note that i must be copied using a firstprivate rather than shared.
Moreover, avoid using global variables like SOLUTION_EXISTS in a parallel code. This generally cause a lot of issues from vicious bugs to slow codes. And if you still need/want to do it, the variables used in multiple threads must be protected using for example omp atomic or omp critical directives.

Reordered output despite critical section

I'm trying to adapt this pascal triangle program to a parallel program using OpenMp. I used the for directive to parallelize the printPas function for loop, and put the conditional statements inside of the critical section so only one thread can print at a time, but it seems like I'm still getting a data race because my output is really inconsistent.
#include <stdio.h>
#ifndef N
#define N 2
#endif
unsigned int t1[2*N+1], t2[2*N+1];
unsigned int *e=t1, *r=t2;
int l = 0;
//the problem is here in this function
void printPas() {
#pragma omp parallel for private(l)
for (l=0; l<2*N+1; l++) {
#pragma omp critical
if (e[l]==0)
printf(" ");
else
printf("%6u", e[l]);
}
printf("\n");
}
void update() {
r[0] = e[1];
#pragma omp parallel for
for (int u=1; u<2*N; u++)
r[u] = e[u-1]+e[u+1];
r[2*N] = e[2*N-1];
unsigned int *tmp = e; e=r; r=tmp;
}
int main() {
e[N] = 1;
for (int i=0; i<N; i++) {
printPas();
update();
}
printPas();
}
Your critical section is causing the prints to run sequentially. Therefore, the code takes longer using 'critical' than it would if you didn't attempt to parallelise it.
Using different threads to print, you have no idea which one will access the critical section first. Therefore, the for-loop will not execute in the order that you would hope.
I suggest either removing the parallel directive ("#pragma omp parallel for private(l)"), or removing the 'critical' and accepting that the prints will come out in a different order every time.

Counting does not work properly in OpenMP

I have the function
void collatz(int startNumber, int endNumber, int* iter, int nThreads)
{
int i, n, counter;
int isodd; /* 1 if n is odd, 0 if even */
#pragma omp parallel for
for (i = startNumber; i <= endNumber; i++)
{
counter = 0;
n = i;
omp_set_num_threads(nThreads);
while (n > 1)
{
isodd = n%2;
if (isodd)
n = 3*n+1;
else
n/=2;
counter++;
}
iter[i - startNumber] = counter;
}
}
It works as I wish when running serial (i.e. compiling without OpenMP or commenting out #pragma omp parallel for and omp_set_num_threads(nThreads);). However, the parallel version produces the wrong result and I think it is because the counter variable need to be set to zero at the beginning of each for loop and perhaps another thread can work with the non-zeroed counter value. But even if I use #pragma omp parallel for private(counter), the problem still occurs. What am I missing?
I compile the program as C89.
Inside your OpenMP parallel region, you are assigning values to the counter, n and isodd scalar variables. These cannot therefore be just shared as they are by default. You need to pay extra attention to them.
A quick analysis shows that as their values is only meaningful inside the parallel region and only for the current thread, so it becomes clear that they need to be declared private.
Adding a private( counter, n, isodd ) clause to your #pragma omp parallel directive should fix the issue.

Partially parallel loops using openmp tasks

Prerequisites:
parallel engine: OpenMP 3.1+ (can be OpenMP 4.0 if needed)
parallel constructs: OpenMP tasks
compiler: gcc 4.9.x (supports OpenMP 4.0)
Input:
C code with loops
loop have cross-iteration data dependency(ies): “i+1“ iteration needs data from “i” iteration (only such kind of dependency, nothing else)
loop body can be partially dependent
loop cannot be split in two loops; loop body should remain solid
anything reasonable can be added to loop or loop body function definition
Code sample:
(Here conf/config/configData variables are used for illustration purposes only, the main interest is within value/valueData variables.)
void loopFunc(const char* config, int* value)
{
int conf;
conf = prepare(config); // independent, does not change “config”
*value = process(conf, *value); // dependent, takes prev., produce next
return;
}
int main()
{
int N = 100;
char* configData; // never changes
int valueData = 0; // initial value
…
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
loopFunc(configData, &valueData);
}
…
}
Need to:
parallelise loop using omp tasks (omp for / omp sections cannot be used)
“prepare” functions should be executed in parallel with other “prepare” or “process” functions
“process” functions should be ordered according to data dependency
What have been proposed and implemented:
define integer flag
assign to it a number of first iteration
every iteration when it needs data waits for flag to be equal to it’s iteration
update flag value when data for next iteration is ready
Like this:
(I reminds that conf/config/configData variables are used for illustration purposes only, the main interest is within value/valueData variables.)
void loopFunc(const char* config, int* value, volatile int *parSync, int iteration)
{
int conf;
conf = prepare(config); // independent, do not change “config”
while (*parSync != iteration) // wait for previous to be ready
{
#pragma omp taskyield
}
*value = process(conf, *value); // dependent, takes prev., produce next
*parSync = iteration + 1; // inform next about readiness
return;
}
int main()
{
int N = 100;
char* configData; // never changes
int valueData = 0; // initial value
volatile int parallelSync = 0;
…
omp_set_num_threads(5);
#pragma omp parallel
#pragma omp single
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
#pragma omp task shared(configData, valueData, parallelSync) firstprivate(i)
loopFunc(configData, &valueData, &parallelSync, i);
}
#pragma omp taskwait
…
}
What happened:
It fails. :)
The reason was that openmp task occupies openmp thread.
For example, if we define 5 openmp threads (as in the code above).
“For” loop generates 100 tasks.
OpenMP runtime assign 5 arbitrary tasks to 5 threads and starts these tasks.
If there will be no task with i=0 among started tasks (it happens time to time), executing tasks wait forever, occupy threads forever and the task with i=0 never being started.
What's next?
I have no other ideas how to implement the required mode of computation.
Current solution
Thanks for the idea to #parallelgeek below
int main()
{
int N = 10;
char* configData; // never changes
int valueData = 0; // initial value
volatile int parallelSync = 0;
int workers;
volatile int workingTasks = 0;
...
omp_set_num_threads(5);
#pragma omp parallel
#pragma omp single
{
workers = omp_get_num_threads()-1; // reserve 1 thread for task generation
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
while (workingTasks >= workers)
{
#pragma omp taskyield
}
#pragma omp atomic update
workingTasks++;
#pragma omp task shared(configData, valueData, parallelSync, workingTasks) firstprivate(i)
{
loopFunc(configData, &valueData, &parallelSync, i);
#pragma omp atomic update
workingTasks--;
}
}
#pragma omp taskwait
}
}
AFAIK volatiles don't prevent hardware reordering, that's why you
could end up with a mess in memory, because data is not written yet,
while flag is already seen by the consuming thread as true.
That's why little piece of advise: use C11 atomics instead in order to ensure visibility of data. As I can see, gcc 4.9 supports c11 C11Status in GCC
You could try to divide generated tasks to groups by K tasks, where K == ThreadNum and start generating subsequent task (after the tasks in the first group are generated) only after any of running tasks is finished. Thus you have an invariant that each time you have only K tasks running and scheduled on K threads.
Intertask dependencies could also be met by using atomic flags from C11.

Trouble with nested loops and openmp

I am having trouble applying openmp to a nested loop like this:
#pragma omp parallel shared(S2,nthreads,chunk) private(a,b,tid)
{
tid = omp_get_thread_num();
if (tid == 0)
{
nthreads = omp_get_num_threads();
printf("\nNumber of threads = %d\n", nthreads);
}
#pragma omp for schedule(dynamic,chunk)
for(a=0;a<NREC;a++){
for(b=0;b<NLIG;b++){
S2=S2+cos(1+sin(atan(sin(sqrt(a*2+b*5)+cos(a)+sqrt(b)))));
}
} // end for a
} /* end of parallel section */
When I compare the serial with the openmp version, the last one gives weird results. Even when I remove #pragma omp for, the results from openmp are not correct, do you know why or can point to a good tutorial explicit about double loops and openmp?
This is a classic example of a race condition. Each of your openmp threads is accessing and updating a shared value at the same time, and there's no guaantee that some of the updates won't get lost (at best) or the resulting answer won't be gibberish (at worst).
The thing with race conditions is that they depend sensitively on the timing; in a smaller case (eg, with smaller NREC and NLIG) you might sometimes miss this, but in a larger case, it'll eventually always come up.
The reason you get wrong answers without the #pragma omp for is that as soon as you enter the parallel region, all of your openmp threads start; and unless you use something like an omp for (a so-called worksharing construct) to split up the work, each thread will do everything in the parallel section - so all the threads will be doing the same entire sum, all updating S2 simultatneously.
You have to be careful with OpenMP threads updating shared variables. OpenMP has atomic operations to allow you to safely modify a shared variable. An example follows (unfortunately, your example is so sensitive to summation order it's hard to see what's going on, so I've changed your sum somewhat:). In the mysumallatomic, each thread updates S2 as before, but this time it's done safely:
#include <omp.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <stdio.h>
double mysumorig() {
double S2 = 0;
int a, b;
for(a=0;a<128;a++){
for(b=0;b<128;b++){
S2=S2+a*b;
}
}
return S2;
}
double mysumallatomic() {
double S2 = 0.;
#pragma omp parallel for shared(S2)
for(int a=0; a<128; a++){
for(int b=0; b<128;b++){
double myterm = (double)a*b;
#pragma omp atomic
S2 += myterm;
}
}
return S2;
}
double mysumonceatomic() {
double S2 = 0.;
#pragma omp parallel shared(S2)
{
double mysum = 0.;
#pragma omp for
for(int a=0; a<128; a++){
for(int b=0; b<128;b++){
mysum += (double)a*b;
}
}
#pragma omp atomic
S2 += mysum;
}
return S2;
}
int main() {
printf("(Serial) S2 = %f\n", mysumorig());
printf("(All Atomic) S2 = %f\n", mysumallatomic());
printf("(Atomic Once) S2 = %f\n", mysumonceatomic());
return 0;
}
However, that atomic operation really hurts parallel performance (after all, the whole point is to prevent parallel operation around the variable S2!) so a better approach is to do the summations and only do the atomic operation after both summations rather than doing it 128*128 times; that's the mysumonceatomic() routine, which only incurs the synchronization overhead once per thread rather than 16k times per thread.
But this is such a common operation that there's no need to implment it yourself. One can use an OpenMP built-in functionality for reduction operations (a reduction is an operation like calculating a sum of a list, finding the min or max of a list, etc, which can be done one element at a time only by looking at the result so far and the next element) as suggested by #ejd. OpenMP will work and is faster (it's optimized implementation is much faster than what you can do on your own with other OpenMP operations).
As you can see, either approach works:
$ ./foo
(Serial) S2 = 66064384.000000
(All Atomic) S2 = 66064384.000000
(Atomic Once) S2 = 66064384.00000
The problem isn't with double loops but with variable S2. Try putting a reduction clause on your for directive:
#pragma omp for schedule(dynamic,chunk) reduction(+:S2)

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