Parallel inner loop slows down program - c

I'm trying to optimize a program as an experiment.
When I parallelized the first two outer loops(with "it" and "i") I saw significant difference on execution time. But when I tried to parallelize the inner most loop the program became much slower than sequential one. I also tried using reduction but the result was the same.
Is this something that I should expect or I made a mistake on the parallelization?
When I use the "nowait" clause it runs faster than the other two previous parallelizations.
#pragma omp parallel private(it,i,j) firstprivate(u,sigma,dt,mu)
{
for (it = 0; it < itime; it++) {
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
sum = 0.0;
#pragma omp for schedule(static)
for (j = 0; j < n; j+=1) {
sum += sigma[i * n + j] * (u[j] - u[i]);
}
#pragma omp atomic write
uplus[i]= (u[i] + dt * (mu - u[i])) + dt * sum / divide;
if (u[i] > uth) {
#pragma omp atomic write
uplus[i] = 0.0;
if (it >= ttransient) {
#pragma omp atomic
omega1[i] += 1.0;
}
}
}
}//omp end

Related

Parallel for nested loops in openmp

I have problem to parallel for-loop code in OpenMP, result of parallel for-loop is different with a sequential for-loop. How to make this code parallel with same result as sequential code.
const long nx = 20;
const long ny = 20;
const long nz = 20;
int i, j, k, a, v;
#pragma omp parallel private(tid_2, i,j,k,a,v) shared(numt_2,nx,ny,nz)
{
numt_2 = omp_get_num_threads();
tid_2 = omp_get_thread_num();
printf("Thread %d Total thread%d\n", tid_2, numt_2);
#pragma omp parallel for collapse(4) //num_threads(3)
for (i = 0; i <= nx; i++)
{
for (j = 0; j <= ny; j++)
{
for (k = 0; k <= nz; k++)
{
for (a = 0; a < 19; a++)
{
ff[fineindex(i, j, k, a)] = 0.0;
//#pragma omp barrier
for (v = 0; v < 19; v++)
{
ff[fineindex(i, j, k, a)] += Minv2[a][v] * rf[v];
}
}
}
}
}
}
Your outer parallel region will execute the inner parallel for region multiple times. Assume there are 8 cores on your machine, the loops will be calculated 8 times, compared to the sequential version only running loops once.
ff is implicitly shared between threads in the parallel region. Therefore, during the computation, data race may exist for ff[fineindex(i, j, k, a)]. Since 8 threads are working on ff at the same time, when two threads try to write to the same index of ff, it may lead to an unpredicted result.
To resolve this issue, you may use omp for instead of omp parallel for for the loops. omp for is just used for worksharing, which distributes your loop iterations to the threads in the outer parallel region. It will not start another parallel region. In this way, each thread in the outer parallel will handle different loop iterations.

Parallel sections code with nested loops in openmp

I made this parallel code to share the iterations like first and last, fisrst+1 and last-1,... But I don't know how to improve the code in every one of the two parallel sections because I have an inner loop in the sections and I can't think of any way to simplify it, thanks.
This isn't about which values are stored in x or y, I use this sections design because the requisite is execute the iterations from 0 to N like: 0 N, 1 N-1, 2 N-2 but I would like to know if I can optimize the inner loops maintaining this model
int x = 0, y = 0,k,i,j,h;
#pragma omp parallel private(i, h) reduction(+:x, y)
{
#pragma omp sections
{
#pragma omp section
{
for (i=0; i<N/2; i++)
{
C[i] = 0;
for (j=0; j<N; j++)
{
C[i] += MAT[i][j] * B[j];
}
x += C[i];
}
}
#pragma omp section
{
for (h=N-1; h>=N/2; h--)
{
C[h] = 0;
for (k=0; k<N; k++)
{
C[h] += MAT[h][k] * B[k];
}
y += C[h];
}
}
}
}
x = x + y;
Using sections seems like the wrong approach. A pragma omp for seems more appropriate. Also note that you forgot to declare j private.
int x = 0, y = 0,k,i,j;
#pragma omp parallel private(i,j) reduction(+:x, y)
{
# pragma omp for nowait
for(i=0; i<N/2; i++) {
// local variable to make the life easier on the compiler
int ci = 0;
for(j=0; j<N; j++)
ci += MAT[i][j] * B[j];
x += ci;
C[i] = ci;
}
# pragma omp for nowait
for(i=N/2; i < N; i++) {
int ci = 0;
for(j=0; j<N; j++)
ci += MAT[i][j] * B[j];
y += ci;
C[i] = ci;
}
}
x = x + y;
Also, I'm not sure but if you just want x as your final output, you can simplify the code even further:
int x=0, i, j;
#pragma omp parallel for reduction(+:x) private(i,j)
for(i=0; i < N; ++i)
for(j=0; j < N; ++j)
x += MAT[i][j] * B[j];
The section construct is to distribute different tasks to different threads and each section block marks a different task so you will not be able to do that iterations in the order you want I answered you here:
Distribution of loop iterations between threads with a specific order
But I want to clarify that the requirement to use sections is that each block must be independent of the other blocks.
A section gets only one thread, so you can't make the loops parallel. How about
Make a parallel loop to N at the top level,
then inside each iteration use a conditional to decide whether to accumulate into x,y?
Although #Homer512 's solution looks correct to me too.

Radix-sort parallel algorithm C program openmp

I'm trying to parallelize the following Radix Sort algorithm C code using OpenMP but I have some doubts about using the OpenMP clauses. In particular, there are some loops where I doubt that they can be parallelized at all.
Here is the code I'm working on:
unsigned getMax(size_t n, unsigned arr[n]) {
unsigned mx = arr[0];
unsigned i;
#pragma omp parallel for reduction(max:mx) private(i)
for (i = 1; i < n; i++)
if (arr[i] > mx)
mx = arr[i];
return mx;
}
void countSort(size_t n, unsigned arr[n], unsigned exp) {
unsigned output[n]; // output array
int i, count[10] = { 0 };
// Store count of occurrences in count[]
#pragma omp parallel for private(i)
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
#pragma omp atomic
count[(arr[i] / exp) % 10]++; }
for (i = 1; i < 10; i++)
count[i] += count[i - 1];
// Build the output array
#pragma omp parallel for private(i)
for (i = (int) n - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
#pragma omp atomic write
output[count[(arr[i] / exp) % 10] - 1] = arr[i];
count[(arr[i] / exp) % 10]--;
}
#pragma omp parallel for private(i)
for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
arr[i] = output[i];
}
// The main function to that sorts arr[] of size n using Radix Sort
void radixsort(size_t n, unsigned arr[n], int threads) {
omp_set_num_threads(threads);
unsigned m = getMax(n, arr);
unsigned exp;
for (exp = 1; m / exp > 0; exp *= 10)
countSort(n, arr, exp);
}
In particular, I'm not sure if for loops like the following can be parallelized or not:
for (i = 1; i < 10; i++)
count[i] += count[i - 1];
#pragma omp parallel for private(i)
for (i = (int) n - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
#pragma omp atomic write
output[count[(arr[i] / exp) % 10] - 1] = arr[i];
count[(arr[i] / exp) % 10]--;
}
I'm asking for help on the specific OMP clauses I should use; other comments on the code shown are also welcome.
First of all to parallelize a code a reasonable amount of work is needed, otherwise the parallel overheads are bigger than the gain by parallelization. This is definitely the case in your example, since you create the output array on stack (so it cannot be big enough). Comments on your code:
Both loops you mention in your question depend on the order of execution, so they cannot be parallelized easily/efficiently. Note also that there is a race condition when count array is accessed.
If you select a base which is a power of 2 (2^k), you can get rid off expensive integer division and you can use fast bitwise/shift operators instead.
Always define your variables in their minimal required scope. So instead of
unsigned i;
#pragma omp parallel for reduction(max:mx) private(i)
for (i = 1; i < n; i++) ....
the following code is preferred:
#pragma omp parallel for reduction(max:mx)
for (unsigned i = 1; i < n; i++) ....
To copy your array, memcpy can be used: memcpy(arr,output,n*sizeof(output[0]))
In this loop
#pragma omp parallel for private(i)
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
#pragma omp atomic
count[(arr[i] / exp) % 10]++; }
you can use reduction instead of atomic operation:
#pragma omp parallel for private(i) reduction(+:count[10])
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
count[(arr[i] / exp) % 10]++; }
Radix sort can be parallelized if you split up the data. One way to do this is to use a most significant digit radix sort for the first pass, to create multiple logical bins. For example, if using base 256 (2^8), you end up with 256 bins, which radix sort can then sort in parallel, based on the number of logical cores on your system. With 4 cores, you can sort 4 bins at a time. This relies on having somewhat uniform distribution of the most significant digit, so that the bins are somewhat equal in size.
Trying to optimize the first pass may not help much, since you'll need atomic read|write for the to update a bin index, and the random access writes to anywhere in the destination array will create cache conflicts.

How to reduce exection time of FFT in a loop using OpenMP?

Unable to reduce the execution time of multiple FFTs using OpenMP.
Tried parallelizing the outermost loop, but thsi degraded the performance
typedef struct{float r; float i;}cmplx_f32_t;
double src[2*128];
double dst[2*128];
double w[128];
cmplx_f32_t data[128][4][256];
cffti(128, w);
for (k = 0; k < 128; k++)
{
for (j = 0; j < 4; j++)
{
for (i = 0; i < 2*32; i++)
{
src[i] = data[i/2][j][k].r;
src[i+1] = data[i/2][j][k].i;
}
cfft2(128, src, dst, w, 1);
}
}
cffti and cfft2 and as given in the example at https://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/c_src/fft_openmp/fft_openmp.html
If I disable the #pragma omp directives from the fft_openmp.c files, the run time is about 11ms. If we use #pragma omp, the total execution time is about 220 ms

nested loops, inner loop parallelization, reusing threads

Disclaimer: following example is just an dummy example to quickly understand the problem. If you are thinking about real world problem, think anything dynamic programming.
The problem:
We have an n*m matrix, and we want to copy elements from previous row as in the following code:
for (i = 1; i < n; i++)
for (j = 0; j < m; j++)
x[i][j] = x[i-1][j];
Approach:
Outer loop iterations have to be executed in order, they would be executed sequentially.
Inner loop can be parallelized. We would want to minimize overhead of creating and killing threads, so we would want to create team of threads just once, however, this seems like an impossible task in OpenMP.
#pragma omp parallel private(j)
{
for (i = 1; i < n; i++)
{
#pragma omp for scheduled(dynamic)
for (j = 0; j < m; j++)
x[i][j] = x[i-1][j];
}
}
When we apply ordered option on the outer loop, the code will be executed sequential way, so there will be no performance gain.
I am looking to solution for the scenario above, even if I had to use some workaround.
I am adding my actual code. This is is actually slower than seq. version. Please review:
/* load input */
for (i = 1; i <= n; i++)
scanf ("%d %d", &in[i][W], &in[i][V]);
/* init */
for (i = 0; i <= wc; i++)
a[0][i] = 0;
/* compute */
#pragma omp parallel private(i,w)
{
for(i = 1; i <= n; ++i) // 1 000 000
{
j=i%2;
jn = j == 1 ? 0 : 1;
#pragma omp for
for(w = 0; w <= in[i][W]; w++) // 1000
a[j][w] = a[jn][w];
#pragma omp for
for(w = in[i][W]+1; w <= wc; w++) // 350 000
a[j][w] = max(a[jn][w], in[i][V] + a[jn][w-in[i][W]]);
}
}
As for measuring, I am using something like this:
double t;
t = omp_get_wtime();
// ...
t = omp_get_wtime() - t;
To sum up the parallelization in OpenMP for this particular case: It is not worth it.
Why?
Operations in the inner loops are simple. Code was compiled with -O3, so max() call was probably substituted with the code of function body.
Overhead in implicit barrier is probably high enough, to compensate the performance gain, and overall overhead is high enough to make the parallel code even slower than the sequential code was.
I also found out, there is no real performance gain in such construct:
#pragma omp parallel private(i,j)
{
for (i = 1; i < n; i++)
{
#pragma omp for
for (j = 0; j < m; j++)
x[i][j] = x[i-1][j];
}
}
because it's performance is similar to this one
for (i = 1; i < n; i++)
{
#pragma omp parallel for private(j)
for (j = 0; j < m; j++)
x[i][j] = x[i-1][j];
}
thanks to built-in thread reusing in GCC libgomp, according to this article: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/story/howto/openmp/
Since the outer loop cannot be paralellized (without ordered option) it looks there is no way to significantly improve performance of the program in question using OpenMP. If someone feels I did something wrong, and it is possible, I'll be glad to see and test the solution.

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