OpenMP parallel code has not the same output as the serial code - c++

I had to change and extend my algorithm for some signal analysis (using the polyfilterbank technique) and couldn't use my old OpenMP code, but in the new code the results are not as expected (the results in the beginning positions in the array are somehow incorrect in comparison with a serial run [serial code shows the expected result]).
So in the first loop tFFTin I have some FFT data, which I'm multiplicating with a window function.
The goal is that a thread runs the inner loops for each polyphase factor. To avoid locks I use the reduction pragma (no complex reduction is defined by standard, so I use my one where each thread's omp_priv variable gets initialized with the omp_orig [so with tFFTin]). The reason I'm using the ordered pragma is that the results should be added to the output vector in an ordered way.
typedef std::complex<float> TComplexType;
typedef std::vector<TComplexType> TFFTContainer;
#pragma omp declare reduction(complexMul:TFFTContainer:\
transform(omp_in.begin(), omp_in.end(),\
omp_out.begin(), omp_out.begin(),\
std::multiplies<TComplexType>()))\
initializer (omp_priv(omp_orig))
void ConcreteResynthesis::ApplyPolyphase(TFFTContainer& tFFTin, TFFTContainer& tFFTout, TWindowContainer& tWindow, *someparams*) {;
#pragma omp parallel for shared(tWindow) firstprivate(sFFTParams) reduction(complexMul: tFFTin) ordered if(iFFTRawDataLen>cMinParallelSize)
for (int p = 0; p < uPolyphase; ++p) {
int iPolyphaseOffset = p * uFFTLength;
for (int i = 0; i < uFFTLength; ++i) {
tFFTin[i] *= tWindow[iPolyphaseOffset + i]; ///< get FFT input data from raw data
}
#pragma omp ordered
{
//using the overlap and add method
for (int i = 0; i < sFFTParams.uFFTLength; ++i) {
pDataPool->GetFullSignalData(workSignal)[mSignalPos + iPolyphaseOffset + i] += tFFTin[i];
}
}
}
mSignalPos = mSignalPos + mStep;
}
Is there a race condition or something, which makes wrong outputs at the beginning? Or do I have some logic error?
Another issue is, I don't really like my solution with using the ordered pragma, is there a better approach( i tried to use for this also the reduction-model, but the compiler doesn't allow me to use a pointer type for that)?

I think your problem is that you have implemented a very cool custom reduction for tFFTin. But this reduction is applied at the end of the parallel region.
Which is after you use the data in tFFTin. Another thing is what H. Iliev mentions that the second iteration of the outer loop relies on data which is computed in the previous iteration - a classic dependency.
I think you should try parallelizing the inner loops.

Related

OpenMP: Is array reduction always needed for updating an array in parallel?

I am quite new to OpenMP. I have the following simple loop that I want to run in parallel with OpenMP:
double rij[3];
double r;
#ifdef _OPENMP
#pragma omp parallel for private(rij,r)
#endif
for (int i=0; i<n; ++i)
{
for (int j=0; j<n; ++j)
{
if (i != j)
{
distance(X,rij,r,i,j);
V[i] += ke * Q[j] / r;
for (int k=0; k<3; ++k)
{
F[3*i+k] += ke * Q[j] * rij[k] / pow(r,3);
}
}
}
}
From what I understood, variables are shared by default which is why I only declared private(rij,r). But according to these questions (first second third), I should do array reduction in this case.
It's clear to me that if many threads need to sum to the same variable, this has to be done with #pragma omp parallel for reduction(+:A[:n]) for summing to array A of size n. This is what I do in another part of my code, and it works as expected.
However, in this case workers never have to sum to the same variable: every worker performs the sum on its index i. Is is correct to do as I do in this case i.e. not doing any array reduction and not using any critical section ?
If my implementation is correct, I believe it would avoid the overhead of the critical section while being simpler code. Feel free to give your advice on how this could be better optimized.
Thank you
You don't need a reduction. It is a feature to avoid copying the same code all over again because they are re-occurring problems (Try to think off, how you would implement a sum-reduction without OpenMP).
What you do right now is working on parallel data (V[i]) which should not overlap at any iteration (as you state in the question), because you divide by i itself. Furthermore write to F[...] shouldn't overlap either, because it only depends on iand k

Parallelize Algorithm with OpenMP in C++

my problem is this:
I want to solve TSP with the Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm in C++.
Right now Ive implemented a algorithm that solve this problem iterative.
For example: I generate 500 ants - and they find their route one after the other.
Each ant starts not until the previous ant finished.
Now I want to parallelize the whole thing - and I thought about using OpenMP.
So my first question is: Can I generate a large number of threads that work
simultaneously (for the number of ants > 500)?
I already tried something out. So this is my code from my main.cpp:
#pragma omp parallel for
for (auto ant = antarmy.begin(); ant != antarmy.end(); ++ant) {
#pragma omp ordered
if (ant->getIterations() < ITERATIONSMAX) {
ant->setNumber(currentAntNumber);
currentAntNumber++;
ant->antRoute();
}
}
And this is the code in my Ant class that is "critical" because each Ant reads and writes into the same Matrix (pheromone-Matrix):
void Ant::antRoute()
{
this->route.setCity(0, this->getStartIndex());
int nextCity = this->getNextCity(this->getStartIndex());
this->routedistance += this->data->distanceMatrix[this->getStartIndex()][nextCity];
int tempCity;
int i = 2;
this->setProbability(nextCity);
this->setVisited(nextCity);
this->route.setCity(1, nextCity);
updatePheromone(this->getStartIndex(), nextCity, routedistance, 0);
while (this->getVisitedCount() < datacitycount) {
tempCity = nextCity;
nextCity = this->getNextCity(nextCity);
this->setProbability(nextCity);
this->setVisited(nextCity);
this->route.setCity(i, nextCity);
this->routedistance += this->data->distanceMatrix[tempCity][nextCity];
updatePheromone(tempCity, nextCity, routedistance, 0);
i++;
}
this->routedistance += this->data->distanceMatrix[nextCity][this->getStartIndex()];
// updatePheromone(-1, -1, -1, 1);
ShortestDistance(this->routedistance);
this->iterationsshortestpath++;
}
void Ant::updatePheromone(int i, int j, double distance, bool reduce)
{
#pragma omp critical(pheromone)
if (reduce == 1) {
for (int x = 0; x < datacitycount; x++) {
for (int y = 0; y < datacitycount; y++) {
if (REDUCE * this->data->pheromoneMatrix[x][y] < 0)
this->data->pheromoneMatrix[x][y] = 0.0;
else
this->data->pheromoneMatrix[x][y] -= REDUCE * this->data->pheromoneMatrix[x][y];
}
}
}
else {
double currentpheromone = this->data->pheromoneMatrix[i][j];
double updatedpheromone = (1 - PHEROMONEREDUCTION)*currentpheromone + (PHEROMONEDEPOSIT / distance);
if (updatedpheromone < 0.0) {
this->data->pheromoneMatrix[i][j] = 0;
this->data->pheromoneMatrix[j][i] = 0;
}
else {
this->data->pheromoneMatrix[i][j] = updatedpheromone;
this->data->pheromoneMatrix[j][i] = updatedpheromone;
}
}
}
So for some reasons the omp parallel for loop wont work on these range-based loops. So this is my second question - if you guys have any suggestions on the code how the get the range-based loops done im happy.
Thanks for your help
So my first question is: Can I generate a large number of threads that work simultaneously (for the number of ants > 500)?
In OpenMP you typically shouldn't care how many threads are active, instead you make sure to expose enough parallel work through work-sharing constructs such as omp for or omp task. So while you may have a loop with 500 iterations, your program could be run with anything between one thread and 500 (or more, but they would just idle). This is a difference to other parallelization approaches such as pthreads where you have to manage all the threads and what they do.
Now your example uses ordered incorrectly. Ordered is only useful if you have a small part of your loop body that needs to be executed in-order. Even then it can be very problematic for performance. Also you need to declare a loop to be ordered if you want to use ordered inside. See also this excellent answer.
You should not use ordered. Instead make sure that the ants know there number beforehand, write the code such that they don't need a number, or at the very least that the order of numbers doesn't matter for ants. In the latter case you can use omp atomic capture.
As to the access to shared data. Try to avoid it as much as possible. Adding omp critical is a first step to get a correct parallel program, but often leads to performance problems. Measure your parallel efficiency, use parallel performance analysis tools to find out if this is the case for you. Then you can use atomic data access or reduction (each threads has their own data they work on and only after the main work is finished, data from all threads is merged).

Parallelizing nested loops with OpenMP

Perhaps the solution to my problem is obvious for some on with exprience with openmp, but I don't have it. I want to accelerate the following subroutine using openmp:
void Build_ERIS(vector<double> &eris, vector<Atomic_Orbital> &Basis)
{
int basis_size = Basis.size();
int m = basis_size*(basis_size+1)/2;
eris.resize(m*(m+1)/2);
bool compute;
std::fill(eris.begin(), eris.end(), 0);
int i_orbital,j_orbital, k_orbital,l_orbital, i_primitive, j_primitive, k_primitive,l_primitive,ij,kl, ijkl,ijij,klkl;
#pragma omp parallel
{
#pragma omp for ordered
for(i_orbital=0; i_orbital<basis_size; i_orbital++){
for(j_orbital=0; j_orbital<i_orbital+1; j_orbital++){
ij = i_orbital*(i_orbital+1)/2 + j_orbital;
for(k_orbital=0; k_orbital<basis_size; k_orbital++){
for(l_orbital=0; l_orbital<k_orbital+1; l_orbital++){
kl = k_orbital*(k_orbital+1)/2 + l_orbital;
if (ij >= kl) {
ijkl = composite_index(i_orbital,j_orbital,k_orbital,l_orbital);
ijij = composite_index(i_orbital,j_orbital,i_orbital,j_orbital);
klkl = composite_index(k_orbital,l_orbital,k_orbital,l_orbital);
for(i_primitive=0; i_primitive<Basis[i_orbital].contraction.size; i_primitive++)
for(j_primitive=0; j_primitive<Basis[j_orbital].contraction.size; j_primitive++)
for(k_primitive=0; k_primitive<Basis[k_orbital].contraction.size; k_primitive++)
for(l_primitive=0; l_primitive<Basis[l_orbital].contraction.size; l_primitive++)
eris[ijkl] +=
normconst(Basis[i_orbital].contraction.exponent[i_primitive],Basis[i_orbital].angular.l, Basis[i_orbital].angular.m, Basis[i_orbital].angular.n)*
normconst(Basis[j_orbital].contraction.exponent[j_primitive],Basis[j_orbital].angular.l, Basis[j_orbital].angular.m, Basis[j_orbital].angular.n)*
normconst(Basis[k_orbital].contraction.exponent[k_primitive],Basis[k_orbital].angular.l, Basis[k_orbital].angular.m, Basis[k_orbital].angular.n)*
normconst(Basis[l_orbital].contraction.exponent[l_primitive],Basis[l_orbital].angular.l, Basis[l_orbital].angular.m, Basis[l_orbital].angular.n)*
Basis[i_orbital].contraction.coef[i_primitive]*
Basis[j_orbital].contraction.coef[j_primitive]*
Basis[k_orbital].contraction.coef[k_primitive]*
Basis[l_orbital].contraction.coef[l_primitive]*
ERI_int(Basis[i_orbital].contraction.center.x, Basis[i_orbital].contraction.center.y, Basis[i_orbital].contraction.center.z, Basis[i_orbital].contraction.exponent[i_primitive],Basis[i_orbital].angular.l, Basis[i_orbital].angular.m, Basis[i_orbital].angular.n,
Basis[j_orbital].contraction.center.x, Basis[j_orbital].contraction.center.y, Basis[j_orbital].contraction.center.z, Basis[j_orbital].contraction.exponent[j_primitive],Basis[j_orbital].angular.l, Basis[j_orbital].angular.m, Basis[j_orbital].angular.n,
Basis[k_orbital].contraction.center.x, Basis[k_orbital].contraction.center.y, Basis[k_orbital].contraction.center.z, Basis[k_orbital].contraction.exponent[k_primitive],Basis[k_orbital].angular.l, Basis[k_orbital].angular.m, Basis[k_orbital].angular.n,
Basis[l_orbital].contraction.center.x, Basis[l_orbital].contraction.center.y, Basis[l_orbital].contraction.center.z, Basis[l_orbital].contraction.exponent[l_primitive],Basis[l_orbital].angular.l, Basis[l_orbital].angular.m, Basis[l_orbital].angular.n);
/**/
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
My concern is regarding the best way of be sure that after the openmp parallelization, the computation of the reductions in eris[ijkl], still giving the same values that the serial version of the routine? How can I do a loops fusion in a way that is numerically safe?
Several things I see.
1) #pragma for ordered means: execute every single one of the iterations of this loop in order. This essentially means that while you're executing "in parallel," all of your work will be done in serial. Remove it.
2) You have not declared any of your variables shared or private. Note that all variables by default will be shared, so in your case ij and kl for instance will be accessible by any thread working on any iteration. You can no doubt see how this would cause a race condition if, say, iteration 100 changed variable ij while iteration 1 thought it was using it.
3) Your variable eris[ijkl] as you rightly noted must be reduced properly. If ijkl can never be the same value for two different iterations in your i_orbital loop, then you're fine as-is; no two threads will ever be changing the same variable eris[ijkl] potentially at the same time. If it can be the same value, then you have to carefully handle reduction on the array.
4) Here's what you should work with for starters. This is assuming that ijkl will never be the same value for two different iterations, and your functions do not take in any non-constant references (potentially changing what I'm assuming input variables to output variables).
#pragma omp parallel for private(i_orbital, j_orbital, ij, k_orbital, l_orbital, kl, ijkl, ijij, klkl, i_primitive, j_primitive, k_primitive, l_primitive)

OpenMP parallelization

I'm writing a C++ program with scientific purposes. The program works well and it returns good results, so I decided to improve its perfomance using OpenMP. The loop I want to optimize is the following one:
//== #pragma omp parallel for private(i,j)
for (k=0; k < number; k++)
{
for (i=0; i < L; i++)
{
for (j=0; j < L; j++)
{
red[i][j] = UNDEFINED;
}
}
Point inicial = {L/2, L/2, OCCUPIED};
red[L/2][L/2] = OCCUPIED;
addToList(inicial, red, list, L,f);
oc.push_back(inicial);
while (list.size() > 0 && L > 0)
{
punto = selectPoint(red, list, generator, prob, p);
if (punto.state == OCCUPIED)
{
addToList(punto, red, list, L,f);
oc.push_back(punto);
}
else
{
out.push_back(punto);
}
}
L = auxL;
oc.clear();
out.clear();
list.clear();
}
f = f*1.0/(number*1.0);
if (f > 0.5)
{
inta = inta;
intb = p;
p = (inta + intb) / 2.0;
}
else if (f < 0.5)
{
intb = intb;
inta = p;
p = (inta + intb) / 2.0;
}
cout << p << endl;
}
My try with OpenMP is commented above. As you can see I've declared i and j as private because they're declared before the parallel section. I've also tried to make L private, with no results. Only segmentation faults and bad pointers everywhere.
I think the problem is that while loop nested inside. My questions are: Is the omp parallel for correct in this case? or should I try to optimize only that while loop? Are the std::vector interfering with OpenMP?
NOTE: list, oc and out are std::vector<Point>, and Point is a simple struct with three int properties. addToList is a function with no loops inside.
You might want to go over an OpenMP tutorial. When you look at OpenMP code, you need to imagine what can happen in parallel. Take
oc.push_back(inicial);
Can two threads try to do this at the same time? Yes. Does std::vector support parallelism? No.
The code above is full of these things.
If you want to use data-structures within your OpenMP ode, you need to use locks. From my personal experience, when this happens, it is far better to refactor the algorithm than actually use them. While OpenMP + locks is possible, it is usually an indication that there's a problem with the idea (= a possibly subjective view).
The current answer points out the concurrency in the code, but please note that not all data-structures have to be implemented with locks to attain thread-safety. There are also lock-free data structures. For this particular case, we could the Harris lock free linked list: https://timharris.uk/papers/2001-disc.pdf
While I know that pointing out concurrency issues to the OP is of great assistance at this point, I want to make sure we don't convey a wrong message by saying that locks are absolutely necessary to attain thread safety.
The directive #pragma omp parallel defines a piece of code that can be executed simultaneously by various threads. In your case, as you have not specified any further directive, your parallel region will be executed once by every thread. In order to achieve a parallel behavior you could try to break the loop into smaller tasks(the taskloop directive will do the job). Those tasks will remain in a task pool until a thread starts executing them. This way your loop will be fragmented and executed by your threads instead of making each thread execute the whole loop.
https://www.openmp.org/spec-html/5.0/openmpsu47.html here's the official openMP documentation for the taskloop directive.

Use OpenMP to find minimum for sets in parallel, C++

I'm implementing Boruvka's algorithm in C++ to find minimum spanning tree for a graph. This algorithm finds a minimum-weight edge for each supervertex (a supervertex is a connected component, it is simply a vertex in the first iteration) and adds them into the MST. Once an edge is added, we update the connected components and repeat the find-min-edge, and merge-supervertices process, until all the vertices in the graph are in one connected component.
Since find-min-edge for each supervertex can be done in parallel, I want to use OpenMP to do this. Here is the omp for loop I would like to use for parallel find-min.
int index[NUM_VERTICES];
#pragma omp parallel private(nthreads, tid, index, min) shared(minedgeindex, setcount, forest, EV, umark)
{
#pragma omp for
for(int k = 0; k < setcount; k++){ //iterate over supervertices, omp for here
min = 9999;
std::fill_n(index, NUM_VERTICES, -1);
/* Gets minimum edge for each supervertex */
for(int i = 0; i < NUM_VERTICES; i++) {
if(forest[i]->mark == umark[k]){ //find vertices with mark k
for(int j = 0; j < NUM_EDGES; j++) {
//check min edge for each vertex in the supervertex k
if(EV[j].v1==i){
if(Find(forest[EV[j].v1])!= Find(forest[EV[j].v2])){
if(EV[j].w <= min ){
min = EV[j].w;
index[k] = j;
break; //break looping over edges for current vertex i, go to next vertex i+1
}
}
}
}
}
} //end finding min disjoint-connecting edge for the supervertex with mark k
if(index[k] != -1){
minedgeindex.insert(minedgeindex.begin(), index[k]);
}
} //omp for end
}
Since I'm new to OpenMP, I currently cannot make it work as I expected.
Let me briefly explain what I'm doing in this block of code:
setcount is the number of supervertices. EV is a vector containing all edges (Edge is a struct I defined previously, has attributes v1, v2, w which correspond to the two nodes it connects and its weight). minedgeindex is a vector, I want each thread to find min edge for each connected component, and add the index (index j in EV) of the min edge to vector minedgeindex at the same time. So I think minedgeindex should be shared. forest is a struct for each vertex, it has a set mark umark indicating which supervertex it's in. I use Union-Find to mark all supervertices, but it is not relevant in this block of omp code.
The ultimate goal I need for this block of code is to give me the correct vector minedgeindex containing all min edges for each supervertex.
To be more clear and ignore the graph background, I just have a large vector of numbers, I separate them into a bunch of sets, then I need some parallel threads to find the min for each set of numbers and give me back the indices for those mins, store them in a vector minedgeindex.
If you need more clarification just ask me. Please help me make this work, I think the main issue is the declaration of private and shared variables which I don't know if I'm doing right.
Thank you in advance!
Allocating an array outside of a parallel block and then declaring it private is not going to work.
Edit: After reading through your code again it does not appear that index should even be private. In that case you should just declare it outside the parallel block (as you did) but not declare it private. But I am not sure you even need index to be an array. I think you can just declare it as an private int.
Additionally, you can't fill minedgeindex like you did. That causes a race condition. You need to put it in a critical section. Personally I would try and use push_back and not insert from the beginning of the array since that's inefficient.
Some people prefer to explicitly declare everything shared and private. In standard C you sorta have to do this, at least for private. But for C99/C++ this is not necessary. I prefer to only declare shared/private if it's necessary. Everything outside of the parallel region is shared (unless it's an index used in a parallel loop) and everything inside is private. If you keep that in mind you rarely have to explicitly declare data shared or private.
//int index[NUM_VERTICES]; //index is shared
//std::fill_n(index, NUM_VERTICES, -1);
#pragma omp parallel
{
#pragma omp for
for(int k = 0; k < setcount; k++){ //iterate over supervertices, omp for here
int min = 9999; // min is private
int index = -1;
//iterate over supervertices
if(index != -1){
#pragma omp critical
minedgeindex.insert(minedgeindex.begin(), index);
//minedgeindex.insert(minedgeindex.begin(), index[k]);
}
}
}
Now that the code is working here are some suggestions to perhaps speed it up.
Using the critical declaration inside the loop could be very inefficient. I suggest filling a private array (std::vector) and then merging them after the parallel loop (but still in the parallel block). The loop has an implicit barrier which is not necessary. This can be removed with nowait.
Independent of the critical section the time to find each minimum can vary per iteration so you may want to consider schedule(dynamic). The following code does all this. Some variation of these suggestions, if not all, may improve your performance.
#pragma omp parallel
{
vector<int> minedgeindex_private;
#pragma omp for schedule(dynamic) nowait
for(int k = 0; k < setcount; k++){ //iterate over supervertices, omp for here
int min = 9999;
int index = -1;
//iterate over supervertices
if(index != -1){
minedgeindex_private.push_back(index);
}
}
#pragma omp critical
minedgeindex.insert(
minedgeindex.end(),
minedgeindex_private.begin(), minedgeindex_private.end());
}
This is not going to work efficiently with openMP, because omp for simply splits the work statically between all threads, i.e. each threads gets a fair share of the supervertices. However, the work per supervertex may be uneven, when the work-sharing between treads not be even.
You can try to use dynamic or guided schedule with openMP, but better is to avoid openMP altogether and use TBB, when tbb::parallel_for() avoids this issue.
OpenMP has several disadvantages:
1) it is pre-processor based
2) it has rather limited functionality (this is what I highlighted above)
3) it isn't standardised for C++ (in particular C++11)
TBB is a pure C++ library (no preprocessor hack) with full C++11 support. For more details, see my answer to this question