If someone is deciding whether to use complex datatypes or stick with contiguous ones, they need to look at their own situation. There is no simple answer. The only thing that is fully predictable is that an MPI operation, measured in isolation, will be no slower with contiguous data than with discontiguous.

The question for a particular application is:

in the application context, how does the performance with this discontiguous datatype compare with the performance I get with other solutions?"

The other solutions include anything your application must do to allow it to use contiguous datatypes. (most often, packing & unpacking)

The water gets even more muddy when you consider that each MPI implementation has differences in how it processes discontiguous data and even a single MPI (like OpenMPI) could have different underlying trade offs, depending on the capabilities of the underlying hardware.

It should not matter whether the program is written in C or Fortran. The cost of processing a discontiguous datatype is tied to the layout of the data in memory and both languages can produce equally simple or complex memory layouts.


Dick Treumann - MPI Team
IBM Systems & Technology Group
Dept X2ZA / MS P963 -- 2455 South Road -- Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
Tele (845) 433-7846 Fax (845) 433-8363


"Cole, Derek E" ---05/07/2010 08:21:48 AM---I don't have any hard numbers for fortran, but I do for C structures. Using C structures with some o

From:	"Cole, Derek E" <derek.e.cole@lmco.com>
To:	Open MPI Users <users@open-mpi.org>
Date:	05/07/2010 08:21 AM
Subject:	Re: [OMPI users] Fortran derived types
Sent by:	users-bounces@open-mpi.org