Parallel Processing: A KISS Approach - University of North Dakota

The only constraint on the data processing is that all of the rows be processed before
moving on to the next iteration. The specific ordering of row processing is not
important. Thus, this problem is considered loosely coupled parallel.
3. The mst.h file:
The mst.h file is used to define include paths required by C/C++, to define global
variables that would be common to any program using this example, to define
PBS/PVM utility routines that would also be common to any program using this
example, and to define user definable parameters that govern the problem size (see
USER DEFINES and USER GLOBAL VARIABLES).
4. The mstSlave.cpp file:
The mstSlave.cpp file is the example for the slave program. Typically, this program is
rather short as all it is usually intended to do is process the blocks of data sent by the
master and return results back to the master.
In the example, the slave program starts and waits (a blocking wait) for a message to
be received from the master. The message contains either data to be processed or a
termination message. If it is data to be processed it will include some “bookkeeping”
data (data I found useful for troubleshooting and monitoring the progress of the
processing) and the data to be processed. The data is then processed and sent back to
the master. If the message contains the termination string (“stop” in this example), the
slave program terminates. Obviously, the processing done in this example is trivial,
but the intent is to show how to pass different data types, the structure of the slave
program, and to stress the need to terminate the slave process when it is no longer
required.
5. Compiling code based on this example:
Like many UNIX systems, Shale has a “make” utility for compiling programs. The
Makefile for the examples is shown below.
C =gcc
CC =g++
OFLAG=-O2
LIBP=-L/usr/lib64/ -L/usr/local/lib/
-L/usr/share/pvm3/lib/LINUXX86_64
LIBS=-lpvm3 -lm
INCP=-I/usr/share/pvm3/include
mst:
$(CC) $@.cpp $(OFLAG) $(INCP) $(LIBP) $(LIBS) -o $@
mstSlave:
36