Interoperability strategies for GASPI and MPI in large-scale scientific applications

Abstract

One of the main hurdles of partitioned global address space (PGAS) approaches is the dominance of message passing interface (MPI), which as a de facto standard appears in the code basis of many applications. To take advantage of the PGAS APIs like global address space programming interface (GASPI) without a major change in the code basis, interoperability between MPI and PGAS approaches needs to be ensured. In this article, we consider an interoperable GASPI/MPI implementation for the communication/performance crucial parts of the Ludwig and iPIC3D applications. To address the discovered performance limitations, we develop a novel strategy for significantly improved performance and interoperability between both APIs by leveraging GASPI shared windows and shared notifications. First results with a corresponding implementation in the MiniGhost proxy application and the Allreduce collective operation demonstrate the viability of this approach.