Import Geant4 7.1.0 source tree
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Gabriele Cosmo
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Parallel Geant4 (ParGeant4)
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Maintained by Gene Cooperman (gene@ccs.neu.edu),
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and Viet Ha Nguyen (vietha@ccs.neu.edu)
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What is ParGeant4 ?
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ParGeant4 [1] is a parallel version of Geant4 that implements event-level
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parallelism to simulate separate events on remote processors. Typical
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simulations demonstrate a nearly linear speedup in running time as the
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number of remote processors increases. The needed enhancements of Geant4
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are included in the examples/extended/parallel directory of the Geant4
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distribution.
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Why is ParGeant4 useful?
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When doing a large Geant4 simulation, one often wishes to run on many
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processors to reduce the overall time. Traditionally, this has been done
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by splitting the events into multiple groups, and running Geant4
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independently on each processor for its own group of events. This requires
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restarting a run if a processor goes down. It also requires saving the
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histogram files from each run, and merging the files prior to using the
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analysis tool. The human effort in this is considerable.
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ParGeant4 provides a much simpler mechanism. After setting up ParGeant4 one
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links and runs the sequential Geant4 application exactly as before, but
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additionally linking with some parallel libraries. Upon execution, ParGeant4
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on the console sends out events to slave processes, collects all hits, and
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calls any analysis tool -- exactly as one would do in the sequential case.
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There is no need to split events into separate groups, track whether one of
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the processors crashed, merge histogram files, etc. If a slave processor
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crashes, ParGeant automatically re-sends the events of that slave processor
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to a new slave processor for re-execution.
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What is the performance of ParGeant4?
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As a rule of thumb, speedup will be nearly linear when each event simulation
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lasts for at least several milliseconds. ParGeant4 has been tested
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extensively on parallelizations of examples/novice/N02 and of
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examples/advanced/underground_physics. On N02, we see a speedup of 27 for
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50 nodes and a speedup of 33 for 100 nodes. When using
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the --aggregated-tasks=50 option (see below) the speedup improves to 35 for
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50 nodes and 60 for 100 nodes.
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In tests of underground_physics, events are longer and we see nearly linear
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speedup (94 times speedup with 100 nodes).
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Getting started
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Detailed information is under extended/parallel/ParN02/docs/000README. There
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are four steps:
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1. Install TOP-C [2].
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2. Compile ParN02 by running gmake.
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3. Make sure the "procgroup" file is correct and copy it to directory of
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the executable binary file (for example, $G4BIN/Linux-g++).
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4. Run the parallel binary program.
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What is involved in setting up ParGeant4?
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To set up ParGeant4, one needs TOP-C [2] and Marshalgen [4] (free, open
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source software). If one is parallelizing a new Geant4 application, one
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must then add/modify approximately 20 lines of annotations (C++ comments
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to indicate shallow vs. deep copying of pointers, etc.) in the .h files
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for each hit type being defined by the application. For details of the
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annotations, refer to the manual of the Marshalgen package. Finally, in
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the main routine of the application, one replaces the call to the G4RunManager
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constructor by a call to the ParRunManager constructor. (ParRunManger is
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a derived class of G4RunManager.)
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After this, one invokes the already provided GNUMakefile (a slightly modified
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version of the Geant4 example GNUMakefile) to create the parallel application.
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Finally, one writes a "procgroup" file, which declares the names of the remote
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hosts to use in the parallel computation. Optionally, one may also specify
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filenames (e.g. slave1.out, slave2.out, ...) to store the printout from each
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slave process. One then calls the ParGeant4 binary exactly as one would call
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the Geant4 binary, and the results appear as normal, only faster.
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Are there examples of using ParGeant4?
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Yes. ParGeant4 includes parallelizations of other examples from the Geant4
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distribution. Specifically, ParGeant4 includes example parallelizations of
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novice/N02, novice/N04, and advanced/underground_physics .
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What are some of the features of ParGeant4?
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ParGeant4 includes all of the features of TOP-C. In particular, after
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building a binary, "parMySimulation", one might call:
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./parMySimulation --TOPC-help
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Display command options, and then exit.
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./parMySimulation --TOPC-trace=0
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By default, ParGeant4 traces each time a new event is sent to a task.
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This turns it off.
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./parMySimulation --TOPC-verbose=0
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By default, ParGeant4 provides statistics indicating what process was run,
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when it was run, what machine, the running times and elapsed times of master
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and the average slave, and other information. This turns off the statistics.
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./parMySimulation --TOPC-aggregated-tasks=10
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By default, ParGeant4 sends one event to one remote process before turning
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to the next process. This option sends 10 events to a single remote process in
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one message. This is useful when events are relatively short, and the network
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latency of sending a message is starting to dominate the running time.
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./parMySimulation --TOPC-slave-timeout=3600
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By default, if a remote process has not communicated with the master after
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1800 seconds (a half hour), the slave process will kill itself. This prevents
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runaway processes that may be in an infinite loop for some event, or may have
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lost their socket to communicate with the master process. In this example, we
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allow 7200 seconds (two hours) because we expect simulation of some events to
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last up to (but not more than) 7200 seconds.
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By default, ParGeant4 uses its own subset implementation of MPI (MPINU).
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ParGeant4 adds approximately 50 KB to the "footprint" of the binary
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executable. By default, ParGeant4 uses "ssh" to set up remote processes.
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Those who wish to use their own MPI (perhaps if a batch cluster requires a
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specific MPI) may do so.
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(See "Configuring a Different `MPI')" in the TOP-C manual [3].)
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References:
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[1] ParGeant4: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/gene/pargeant4.html
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[2] TOP-C: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/gene/topc.html
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[3] TOP-C manual: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/gene/topc/topc_toc.html
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[4] Marshalgen : http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/gene/marshalgen.html
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