Octave-MPI via oct-files

[JD Cole]

I had previously inquired about integrating Andy Jacobson's work on 
octave-mpi, see the thread "Patching Octave-MPI". During that discussion 
implementing MPI functionality in oct-files was brought as a way to 
separate MPI code from octave base distribution. I have successfully 
implemented some limited MPI functionality into oct-files, see the 
attached tar file.

Please have a look at the code. I haven't implemented the documentation 
yet, but with a small background in MPI functions, you should be able to 
grasp the concept.

You'll notice after grazing the code that I have copied the 
read/save_binary_data functions and their depencies into mpi_send/recv. 
This was done because I wanted that functionality but currently these 
functions are "static" in load-save.cc in the Octave source. Of course, 
I would rather not duplicate code, if I can avoid it, so I'm wondering 
if it would be wrong to expose those functions in load-save.cc?

Also, since LAM  MPI is quite sensitive to the sequence of calls 
lamboot->MPI_Init-> (other MPI calls), i.e. it terminates a program 
without remorse, I install a global variable octave_mpi_session_flag 
which allows MPI functions to tell if MPI_Init of MPI_Finalize have been 
called. (I have considered implementing this variable as shared memory, 
i.e. external to Octave, as to not used octave internals such as the line:

symbol_record *sr = global_sym_tab->lookup("octave_mpi_session_flag");

if that practive is considered "taboo".)


Best,
JD

mpi-ss20021218.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data