[ET Trac] [Einstein Toolkit] #1150: Simfactory: it doesn't honor --procs when running testsuites

[Einstein Toolkit]

#1150: Simfactory: it doesn't honor --procs when running testsuites
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  Reporter:  bmundim     |       Owner:  eschnett
      Type:  defect      |      Status:  new     
  Priority:  major       |   Milestone:          
 Component:  SimFactory  |     Version:          
Resolution:              |    Keywords:          
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Comment (by bmundim):

 >People rarely want to specify the number of MPI processes. They typically
 want to specify the number of >cores that they request from the queueing
 system, since this is what they pay for.

 Wouldn't the be more natural that they submit their jobs through
 simfactory with a --cores option?

 >Given that the number of OpenMP threads is also fixed (either at one, or
 at a small integer number >depending on the system hardware), then actual
 number of MPI processes then needs to be calculated >automatically. This
 is guaranteed to always lead to a "sensible" answer.

 I agree. Most of the time users won't care for the number of MPI processes
 and or number of threads.
 That's what the machine database in simfactory is there for, and, as far
 as I understood, you wouldn't need
 to specify the number of threads per process you want, only the total
 number of cores or nodes (another interesting option would be --nodes or
 --num-nodes). However when we want to experiment with other
 configurations then the options become unintuitive. Also when I suggested
 --tasks or --mpi-tasks or
 --num-mpitasks I was referring tasks per node. Again that would be
 important only if the user wants to
 experiment (or to run testsuites).

 >The converse, e.g. specifying MPI processes and threads, can easily lead
 to underused nodes.

 That's correct if we are specifying the total number of MPI processes.
 That wouldn't be a problem
 if we specify the number of MPI processes per node in the same fashion we
 do specify the number of
 threads per MPI process.

 >Specifying cores and MPI processes can easily lead to strange (non-
 optimal) numbers of OpenMP threads.

 I agree. We either specify one or the other. Not both at the same time.

 >Under- and over-subscribing should work fine in Simfactory, apart from
 particular submit scripts that >may not be able to handle this.

 Ok, so it is only a matter of making the option names more intuitive for
 the work they are supposed to
 do.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.einsteintoolkit.org/ticket/1150#comment:8>
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