Intel(R) MPI Library Developer Reference for Linux* OS

Developer Reference

Contents

Main ThreadProcess Pinning

Use this feature to pin a particular MPI
process
 to a corresponding set of CPUs within a node and avoid undesired
process
 migration. This feature is available on operating systems that provide the necessary kernel interfaces.
This page describes the pinning process. You can simulate your pinning configuration using the Pinning Simulator for Intel MPI Library.

Processor Identification

The following schemes are used to identify logical processors in a system:
  • System-defined logical enumeration
  • Topological enumeration based on three-level hierarchical identification through triplets (package/socket, core, thread)
The number of a logical CPU is defined as the corresponding position
of
 this CPU bit in the kernel affinity bit-mask. Use the
cpuinfo
 utility, provided with your Intel MPI Library installation
or the
cat /proc/cpuinfo
command
 to find out the logical CPU numbers.
The three-level hierarchical identification uses triplets that provide information about processor location and their order. The triplets are hierarchically ordered (package, core, and thread).
See the example for one possible processor numbering
where there are
 two sockets, four cores (two cores per socket), and eight logical processors (two processors per core).
Note
Logical and topological enumerations are not the same.
Logical Enumeration
0
4
1
5
2
6
3
7
Hierarchical Levels
Socket
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
Core
0
0
1
1
0
0
1
1
Thread
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
Topological Enumeration
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Use the
cpuinfo
 utility to identify the correspondence between the logical and topological enumerations. See Processor Information Utility for more details.

Default Settings

If you do not specify values for any
process
 pinning environment variables, the default settings below are used. For details about these settings, see Environment Variables and Interoperability with OpenMP API.
  • I_MPI_PIN=on
  • I_MPI_PIN_MODE=pm
  • I_MPI_PIN_RESPECT_CPUSET=on
  • I_MPI_PIN_RESPECT_HCA=on
  • I_MPI_PIN_CELL=unit
  • I_MPI_PIN_DOMAIN=auto:compact
  • I_MPI_PIN_ORDER=compact
If I_MPI_PIN_ORDER
 is not specified and one of the sockets (NUMA-nodes) is not used, for better performance the 'bunch' order will automatically be used instead of the default ‘compact’ order.
If hyperthreading is on, the number or processes on the node is greater than the number of cores and no one process pinning environment variable is set. For better performance, the "spread" order will automatically be used instead of the default "compact" order.

Product and Performance Information

1

Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors. Learn more at www.Intel.com/PerformanceIndex.