[petsc-users] Grid Partitioning with ParMetis

Mohammad Mirzadeh mirzadeh at gmail.com
Fri Jul 29 00:11:55 CDT 2011


I see. Thanks for the help Matt

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 4:52 AM, Mohammad Mirzadeh <mirzadeh at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Thank you Matt. Indeed I have looked into p4est and also Dendro. p4est
>> uses parallel octrees/quadtrees but for what I intend to do I only need to
>> distribute a single tree that is created in serial among processors.
>> I definitely like to have the tree data-structure in parallel but that would
>> be another project. I also looked into Dendro and they kind of follow the
>> same strategy. i.e every single processor has a local copy of the whole
>> tree. What they do differently, however, is they somehow manage to use DA
>> instead of a general unstructured numbering which is quite interesting but I
>> still don't know how they do it. Unfortunately, they do not handle (as far
>> as I understood from their manual) non-graded trees which are the ones I
>> work with.
>>
>> So, all I need to do is to somehow distribute my grid among processors and
>> since each one has a local copy of data-structure I could get around the
>> problem. Just anotehr question. If the partitioning is not unique, do you at
>> least get a better numbering than the tree you start with?
>>
>
> You should, which is why I suggested that you are not giving the input you
> think you are.
>
>    Matt
>
>
>> Mohammad
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 9:25 PM, Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 3:49 AM, Mohammad Mirzadeh <mirzadeh at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I am trying to write a code to do parallel computation on quadtree
>>>> adaptive grids and to do so , I need to distribute the grid in parallel. I
>>>> have selected a general unstructured framework for telling PETSc about my
>>>> node numbering. An example of such grid is schematically shown below.
>>>>
>>>
>>> 0) If you are doing this, I think you should at least look at the p4est
>>> package before proceeding.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> 1                16              7                             3
>>>> +---------------+---------------+------------------------------+
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |14             | 15           | 17                           |
>>>> +---------------+---------------+                              |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> | 4             | 12            | 6                            |8
>>>> +---------------+---------------+------------------------------+
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> | 9              | 11           |  13                         |
>>>> +---------------+---------------+                              |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> | 0              | 10           |5                             | 2
>>>> +---------------+---------------+------------------------------+
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> To distribute this in parallel I am using the ParMetis interface via MatPartitioning object and I follow(more or less) the example in $PETSC_DIR/src/dm/ao/examples/tutorials/ex2.c; To make the initial distribution, I choose nodal based partitioning by creating the adjacency matrix, for which I create ia and ja arrays accordingly. once the grid is processed and the new orderings are generated, I follow all required steps to generate the AO needed to map between PETSc ordering and the new global numbering and this is the result:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Number of elements in ordering 18
>>>> PETSc->App  App->PETSc
>>>>   0    9                  0    1
>>>>   1    0                  1    3
>>>>   2   10                 2    4
>>>>   3    1                  3    7
>>>>   4    2                  4   12
>>>>   5   11                 5   14
>>>>   6   12                 6   15
>>>>   7    3                  7   16
>>>>   8   13                 8   17
>>>>   9   14                 9    0
>>>>  10   15               10    2
>>>>  11   16               11    5
>>>>  12    4                12    6
>>>>  13   17               13    8
>>>>  14    5                14    9
>>>>  15    6                15   10
>>>>  16    7                16   11
>>>>  17    8                17   13
>>>>
>>>> Now I have two questions/concerns:
>>>>
>>>> 1) Do processors always have the nodes in contiguous chunks of PETSc
>>>> ordering? i.e 0-8 on rank 0 and 9-17 on rank 1 ? If so, this particular
>>>> ordering does not seem to be "good" for this grid since it seems to cross
>>>> too many edges in the graph (here 13 edges) and by just looking at the graph
>>>> I can(at least) think of a better distribution with only 6 edge cuts. (if
>>>> you are wondering how, having {0,9,4,14,1,10,11,12,15} on rank 0 and rest on
>>>> rank 1).
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, the PETSc ordering is always contiguous. Perhaps you are not
>>> providing the graph you think you are for partitioning.
>>>
>>>
>>>> 2) Isn't  it true that the final distribution should be independent of
>>>> initial grid numbering? When I try the same grid but with the following
>>>> (hand-generated) numbering:
>>>>
>>>>  14               15             16                             17
>>>> +---------------+---------------+------------------------------+
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |11             | 12           | 13                           |
>>>> +---------------+---------------+                              |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> | 7             | 8              | 9                            |10
>>>> +---------------+---------------+------------------------------+
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> | 4              | 5             |  6                           |
>>>> +---------------+---------------+                              |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> |                |                |                               |
>>>> | 0              | 1             |2                             | 3
>>>> +---------------+---------------+------------------------------+
>>>>
>>>> I get the following AO:
>>>>
>>>> Number of elements in ordering 18
>>>> PETSc->App  App->PETSc
>>>>   0    9                   0    9
>>>>   1   10                  1   10
>>>>   2   11                  2   11
>>>>   3   12                  3   12
>>>>   4   13                  4   13
>>>>   5   14                  5   14
>>>>   6   15                  6   15
>>>>   7   16                  7   16
>>>>   8   17                  8   17
>>>>   9    0                   9    0
>>>>  10    1                10    1
>>>>  11    2                11    2
>>>>  12    3                12    3
>>>>  13    4                13    4
>>>>  14    5                14    5
>>>>  15    6                15    6
>>>>  16    7                16    7
>>>>  17    8                17    8
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> which is simply the initial ordering with a change in the order in which
>>>> processors handle nodes.  Could it be that the partitioning is not unique
>>>> and each time the algorithm only tries to obtain the "best" possible
>>>> ordering depending on the initial distribution? If so, how should I know
>>>> what ordering to start with?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, ParMetis does not provide a unique "best" ordering, which is at
>>> least NP-complete if not worse.
>>>
>>>    Matt
>>>
>>>
>>>> I am really confused and would appreciate if someone could provide some
>>>> insights.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Mohammad
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
>>> experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
>>> experiments lead.
>>> -- Norbert Wiener
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
> experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
> experiments lead.
> -- Norbert Wiener
>
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