Tutorial

This is a step-by-step tutorial to introduce the main concepts of Charm4py, and is meant to be done from an interactive session. It is not meant to provide realistic examples, or to cover every possible topic. For examples, you can refer to Examples.

To begin, launch an interactive session with 2 processes:

$ python3 -m charmrun.start +p2 ++interactive

This launches Charm4py with two processes on the local host, with an interactive console running on the first process. In Charm4py, we also refer to processes as Processing Elements (PEs).

First steps

The interactive console is actually a chare running on PE 0, and the prompt is running inside a coroutine of this chare. Typing:

>>> self
<charm4py.interactive.InteractiveConsole object at 0x7f7d9b1290f0>

will show that self is an InteractiveConsole object. As mentioned, this object exists only on PE 0.

Now, let’s look at the charm object:

>>> charm
<charm4py.charm.Charm object at 0x7f7d9f6d9208>

charm exists on every PE. It represents the Charm runtime. We can query information from it:

>>> charm.myPe()
0

Tells us that this process is PE 0.

>>> charm.numPes()
2
>>> charm.numHosts()
1

The above tells us that we are running Charm4py with 2 PEs on 1 host.

Chares

In this tutorial, we are going to be defining chares dynamically after the Charm runtime has started, and so these definitions need to be sent to other processes at runtime. Note that non-interactive applications typically have everything defined in the source files (which every process reads at startup).

Let’s define a simple chare type. Paste the following in the console:

class Simple(Chare):
    def sayHi(self):
        print('Hello from PE', charm.myPe())
        return 'hi done'

You will see this:

Charm4py> Broadcasted Chare definition

We have defined a new chare of type Simple and the runtime has automatically broadcasted its definition to other processes. We can now create chares of this type and call their methods:

>>> chare = Chare(Simple, onPE=1)  # create a single chare on PE 1
>>> chare
<__main__.SimpleArrayProxy object at 0x7f7d9b129668>
>>> chare.sayHi()
Hello from PE 1

It is important to note that chare is what is called a Proxy. As we can see, remote methods are called via proxies, using regular Python method invocation syntax.

Tip

Proxies are lightweight objects that can be sent to other chares.

The chare we created lives on PE 1, and that is where its method executes. Note that Charm4py automatically collects “prints” and sends them to PE 0, where they are actually printed.

Remote method invocation is asynchronous, returns immediately, and by default does not return anything. We can wait for a call to complete or obtain a return value by requesting a Future using ret=True:

>>> f = chare.sayHi(ret=True)
Hello from PE 1
>>> f
<charm4py.threads.Future object at 0x7f7d9b129f28>
>>> f.get()
'hi done'

Remote method invocation is asynchronous

All method invocations via a proxy are asynchronous. Above, we called some remote methods, but they execute so quickly that it is not obvious that it happens asynchronously. To illustrate this more clearly, we will define a method that takes longer to execute.

Paste the following into the console:

class AsyncSimple(Chare):
    def sayHi(self):
        time.sleep(5)
        print('Hello from PE', charm.myPe())
        return 'hi done'

Now, let’s invoke the method:

>>> import time
Charm4py> Broadcasted import statement
>>> chare = Chare(AsyncSimple, onPE=1)
>>> chare.sayHi()

As we can see, the call returns immediately. We won’t see any output until the method completes (after 5 seconds). Now let’s see what happens if we want to explicitly wait for the call to complete:

>>> f = chare.sayHi(awaitable=True)
>>> f.get()

We request a future by making the call awaitable. We can then block on the future to wait for completion. It is important to note that this only blocks the current coroutine (it does not block the whole process).

Charm also has a nice feature called quiescence detection (QD) that can be used to detect when all PEs are idle. We can wait for QD like this:

>>> chare.sayHi()
>>> charm.waitQD()

Chare Groups

In many situations we create collections of chares, which are distributed across processes by the runtime. First let’s look at Groups, which are collections with one element per PE:

>>> g = Group(AsyncSimple)
>>> g
<__main__.AsyncSimpleGroupProxy object at 0x7f7d9f9f7fd0>
>>> g.sayHi(awaitable=True).get()
Hello from PE 0
Hello from PE 1

We created a group of AsyncSimple chares and made an awaitable call. Note that because we don’t refer to any specific element, the message is sent to every member (also known as a broadcast). We call get() on the obtained future, which blocks until the call completes on every member of the group. Note that we didn’t get any return values. Let’s request return values now:

>>> g.sayHi(ret=True).get()
Hello from PE 1
Hello from PE 0
['hi done', 'hi done']

As we can see, we got return values from every member. We can refer to specific members by using their index on the proxy. For groups, the index coincides with the PE number:

>>> g[1].sayHi(ret=True).get()
'hi done'
Hello from PE 1

Chares have one primary collection to which they can belong to, and they have access to the collection proxy via their thisProxy attribute. They have access to their index in the collection via the thisIndex attribute. For example, define the following chare type:

class Test(Chare):
    def start(self):
        print('I am element', self.thisIndex, 'on PE', charm.myPe(),
              'sending a msg to element 1')
        self.thisProxy[1].sayHi()
    def sayHi(self):
        print('Hello from element', self.thisIndex, 'on PE', charm.myPe())

Now, we will make element 0 send a message to element 1:

>>> g = Group(Test)
>>> g[0].start()
I am element 0 on PE 0 sending a msg to element 1
Hello from element 1 on PE 1

You can store a proxy referencing an individual element, for later use:

>>> elem = g[0]
>>> elem.sayHi()
Hello from element 0 on PE 0

Chare Arrays

Chare Arrays are a more versatile kind of distributed collection, which can have zero or multiple chares on a PE, and chares can migrate between processes.

Let’s create an Array of 4 chares of the previously defined type Test and see where the runtime places them:

>>> a = Array(Test, 4)
>>> a.sayHi()
Hello from element (2,) on PE 1
Hello from element (3,) on PE 1
Hello from element (0,) on PE 0
Hello from element (1,) on PE 0

As we can see, it has created two on each PE.

Array elements have N-dimensional indexes (from 1D to 6D), represented by a tuple. For example, let’s create a 2 x 2 array instead:

>>> a = Array(Test, (2,2))
>>> a.sayHi()
Hello from element (0, 0) on PE 0
Hello from element (0, 1) on PE 0
Hello from element (1, 0) on PE 1
Hello from element (1, 1) on PE 1
>>> a[(1,0)].sayHi()
Hello from element (1, 0) on PE 1

Charm is a chare too

The charm object is a chare too (part of a Group), which means it has methods that can be invoked remotely:

>>> charm.thisProxy[1].myPe(ret=True).get()
1

Calls the method myPe() of charm on PE 1, and returns the value.

In interactive mode, Charm also exposes exec and eval for dynamic remote code execution:

>>> charm.thisProxy[1].eval('charm.myPe()', ret=True).get()
1

Note that remote exec and eval are only enabled by default in interactive mode. If you want to use them in regular non-interactive mode, you have to set charm.options.remote_exec to True before the charm runtime is started.

Broadcasting globals

Suppose we want to broadcast and set globals on some or all processes. With what we know, we could easily implement our own way of doing this. For example, we could create a custom chare Group with a method that receives objects and stores them in the global namespace. However, charm provides a convenient remote method to do this:

>>> charm.thisProxy.updateGlobals({'MY_GLOBAL': 1234}, awaitable=True).get()
>>> charm.thisProxy.eval('MY_GLOBAL', ret=True).get()
[1234, 1234]

As we can see, there is now a global called MY_GLOBAL in the main module’s namespace on every PE. We can specify the Python module where we want to set the global variables as a second parameter to updateGlobals. If left unspecified, it will use __main__ (which is the same namespace where InteractiveConsole runs).

Reductions

Reductions are very useful to aggregate data among members of a collection in a way that is scalable and efficient, and send the results anywhere in the system via a callback. We will illustrate this with a simple example. First define the following chare type:

class RedTest(Chare):
    def work(self, data, callback):
        self.reduce(callback, data, Reducer.sum)
    def printResult(self, result):
        print('[' + str(self.thisIndex[0]) + '] Result is', result)

Now we will create an Array of 20 of these chares and broadcast some data so that they can perform a “sum” reduction. Normally, each chare would provide its own unique data to a reduction, but in this case we broadcast the value for simplicity. As callback, we will provide a future:

>>> a = Array(RedTest, 20)
>>> f = Future()
>>> a.work(1, f)
>>> f.get()
20

We manually created a future to receive the result, and passed data (int value 1) and the future via a broadcast call. The chares performed a reduction using the received data, and sent the result to the callback, in this case the future. Because we passed a value of 1, the result equals the number of chares. Note that reductions happen asynchronously, and don’t block other ongoing tasks in the system.

Note

Reductions are performed in the context of the collection to which the chare belongs to: all objects in that particular collection have to contribute for the reduction to complete.

The other main type of callback used in Charm is a remote method of some chare(s). For example, we can send the result of the reduction to element 7 of the array:

>>> a.work(1, a[7].printResult)
[7] Result is 20

You can even broadcast the result of the reduction to all elements using a.printResult as the callback. Try it and see what happens.

Reductions are useful when data that is distributed among many objects across the system needs to be aggregated in some way, for example to obtain the maximum value in a distributed data set or to concatenate data in some fashion. The aggregation operations that are applied to the data are called reducers, and Charm4py includes several built-in reducers, including sum, max, min, product and gather. Users can also define their own reducers (see Reducers).

It is common to perform reduction operations on arrays:

>>> import numpy
>>> f = Future()
>>> a.work(numpy.array([1,2,3]), f)
>>> f.get()
array([20, 40, 60])

You can also do empty reductions to know when all the elements in a collection have reached a certain point. Simply provide a callback to the reduce call and omit the data and reducer.

Channels

Channels in Charm4py are streams or pipes between chares (currently only point-to-point). They are useful for writing iterative applications where chares always send/recv to/from the same the set of chares.

Here, we will establish a channel between the InteractiveConsole and another chare. First let’s define the chare:

class Echo(Chare):
    @coro
    def run(self, remote_proxy):
        ch = Channel(self, remote=remote_proxy)
        while True:
            x = ch.recv()
            ch.send(x)

Echo chares will establish a channel with whatever chare is passed to them in the run method, and will enter an infinite loop where they wait to receive something from the channel and then send it right back:

>>> chare = Chare(Echo, onPE=1)
>>> chare.run(self.thisProxy)
>>> ch = Channel(self, remote=chare)
>>> ch.send('hello')
>>> ch.recv()
'hello'
>>> ch.send(1,2,3)
>>> ch.recv()
(1, 2, 3)

Note that on calling recv() a coroutine suspends until there is something to receive.

Pool

Charm4py also has a distributed pool of workers that can be used to execute transient tasks in parallel, where tasks are defined as Python functions. This pool automatically distributes tasks across processes and even multiple hosts.

A common operation is map, which applies a function in parallel to the elements of an iterable and returns the list of results. For example:

>>> charm.pool.map(abs, range(-1,-20,-1))
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19]

If your tasks are very small, you will want to group them into chunks for efficiency. Pool can do this for you with the chunksize parameter (see Pool).

Note that the pool of workers reserves PE 0 for a scheduler, so there are P-1 workers (P being the number of PEs). So you might want to adjust the number of processes accordingly.

Tip

Tasks themselves can use the pool to create and wait for other tasks, which is useful for implementing recursive parallel algorithms and state space search (or similar) algorithms. There are examples of this in the source code repository.