A Hybrid MPI design using SCTP and iWARP

Abstract— Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and pointto-point network fabrics both have their own advantages. MPI middleware implementations typically use one or the other, however, the appearance of the Internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol (iWARP), RDMA over IP, and protocol off-load devices introduces the opportunity to use a hybrid design for MPI middleware that uses both iWARP and a transport protocol directly. We explore the design of a new MPICH2 channel device based on iWARP and the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) that uses SCTP for all point-to-point MPI routines and iWARP for all remote memory access routines (i.e., one-sided communication). The design extends the Ohio Supercomputer Center softwarebased iWARP stack and our MPICH2 SCTP-based channel device. The hybrid channel device aligns the semantics of the MPI routine with the underlying protocol that best supports the routine and also allows the MPI API to exploit the potential performance benefits of the under...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Mike Tsai, Brad Penoff, Alan Wagner
• Keywords: Channel Device, Distributed And Parallel Computing, IPPS 2008, MPI Middleware, Mpi Routine