Issue with MPI spawn and merge

Question

I am trying to get started on dynamic process creation in MPI. I have a parent code (main.c) trying to spawn new worker/child processes (worker.c) and merge both into one intracommunicator. The parent code (main.c) is

#include<stdio.h>
#include "mpi.h"

MPI_Comm child_comm;
int rank, size;
MPI_Comm_rank(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &rank);
MPI_Comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &size);

if(rank == 0 )
{
   int  num_processes_to_spawn = 2;
   MPI_Comm_spawn("worker", MPI_ARGV_NULL, num_processes_to_spawn, MPI_INFO_NULL, 0, MPI_COMM_SELF, &child_comm, MPI_ERRCODES_IGNORE );

MPI_Comm intra_comm;
MPI_Intercomm_merge(child_comm,0, &intra_comm);
MPI_Barrier(child_comm);


int tmp_size;
MPI_Comm_size(intra_comm, &tmp_size);
printf("size of intra comm world = %d\n", tmp_size);

MPI_Comm_size(child_comm, &tmp_size);
printf("size of child comm world = %d\n", tmp_size);

MPI_Comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &tmp_size);
printf("size of parent comm world = %d\n", tmp_size);

}

MPI_Finalize();

The worker (child) code is:

    #include<stdio.h> 
    #include "mpi.h"
    int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
    {
    int numprocs, myrank;
    MPI_Comm parentcomm;
    MPI_Comm intra_comm;

    MPI_Init( &argc, &argv );
    MPI_Comm_size( MPI_COMM_WORLD, &numprocs );
    MPI_Comm_rank( MPI_COMM_WORLD, &myrank );

    MPI_Comm_get_parent( &parentcomm );

    MPI_Intercomm_merge(parentcomm, 1, &intra_comm);
    MPI_Barrier(parentcomm);

    if(myrank == 0)
    {
    int tmp_size;
    MPI_Comm_size(parentcomm, &tmp_size);
    printf("child size of parent comm world = %d\n", tmp_size);

    MPI_Comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &tmp_size);
    printf("child size of child comm world = %d\n", tmp_size);

    MPI_Comm_size(intra_comm, &tmp_size);
    printf("child size of intra comm world = %d\n", tmp_size);

    MPI_Finalize( );
    return 0;
  }
 }

I run this code using

mpirun -np 12 main.c

After split and merge, I expect the output as

size of intra comm world = 14
size of child comm world = 2
size of parent comm world = 12
child size of parent comm world = 12
child size of child comm world = 2
child size of intra comm world = 14

But I get the following incorrect output.

   size of intra comm world = 3
    size of child comm world = 1
    size of parent comm world = 12
    child size of parent comm world = 2
    child size of child comm world = 2
    child size of intra comm world = 3

I do not understand where the mistake it, could kindly someone let me know where the mistake is.

Thanks, Kris

Gilles · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-31 05:44:09Z

Your code suffers from a few problems, which I'll try to list here:

In the master part, only process 0 calls MPI_Comm_spawn(). This isn't a mistake as such (especially since you use MPI_COMM_SELF as parent communicator), but it de facto excludes all other processes from the subsequent merging.
In both the master and worker parts, you use MPI_Comm_size() to get the size of the remote communicator instead of MPI_Comm_remote_size(). Therefore you will only get the size of the local communicator inside the inter-communicator, instead of the size of the remote communicator.
In the master code, only process 0 calls MPI_Finalise() (not to mention that main() and MPI_Init() are missing)

Here are some fixed version of your codes:

master.c

#include <stdio.h>
#include <mpi.h>

int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) {

    MPI_Init( &argc, &argv );
    int rank;
    MPI_Comm_rank( MPI_COMM_WORLD, &rank );

    MPI_Comm child_comm;
    int  num_processes_to_spawn = 2;
    MPI_Comm_spawn( "./worker", MPI_ARGV_NULL,
                    num_processes_to_spawn, MPI_INFO_NULL,
                    0, MPI_COMM_WORLD,
                    &child_comm, MPI_ERRCODES_IGNORE );

    MPI_Comm intra_comm;
    MPI_Intercomm_merge( child_comm, 0, &intra_comm );

    if ( rank == 0 ) {
        int tmp_size;
        MPI_Comm_size( intra_comm, &tmp_size );
        printf( "size of intra comm world = %d\n", tmp_size );

        MPI_Comm_remote_size( child_comm, &tmp_size );
        printf( "size of child comm world = %d\n", tmp_size );

        MPI_Comm_size( MPI_COMM_WORLD, &tmp_size );
        printf( "size of parent comm world = %d\n", tmp_size );
    }

    MPI_Finalize();

    return 0;
}

worker.c

#include <stdio.h> 
#include <mpi.h>

int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) {

    MPI_Init( &argc, &argv );

    int myrank;
    MPI_Comm_rank( MPI_COMM_WORLD, &myrank );

    MPI_Comm parentcomm;
    MPI_Comm_get_parent( &parentcomm );

    MPI_Comm intra_comm;
    MPI_Intercomm_merge( parentcomm, 1, &intra_comm );

    if ( myrank == 0 ) {
        int tmp_size;
        MPI_Comm_remote_size( parentcomm, &tmp_size );
        printf( "child size of parent comm world = %d\n", tmp_size );

        MPI_Comm_size( MPI_COMM_WORLD, &tmp_size );
        printf( "child size of child comm world = %d\n", tmp_size );

        MPI_Comm_size( intra_comm, &tmp_size );
        printf( "child size of intra comm world = %d\n", tmp_size );
    }

    MPI_Finalize();

    return 0;
}

Which gives on my laptop:

~> mpirun -n 12 ./master
child size of parent comm world = 12
child size of child comm world = 2
child size of intra comm world = 14
size of intra comm world = 14
size of child comm world = 2
size of parent comm world = 12

Thanks Gilles. I realized that it was an issue of remote group size;

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