Hi,

>>  I was wondering if someone could help me with writing and running
>
> some tests for my domain map, both correctness and performance tests?
>
> We have a framework that exercises common cases and corner cases of
> using a domain map. See these readmes in the Chapel repository on github:
>
>    test/distributions/robust/README
>    test/distributions/robust/arithmetic/README
>
> The second README says how to extend the framework to use a new
> distribution - it is a straightforward modification of:
>
>    test/distributions/robust/arithmetic/driver.chpl

Thanks, I had totally missed those README's. 


>>  The code is on github and I'm willing to contribute it if it gets
>
> developed enough to be included in Chapel.
>
> We welcome your contribution! Please see the first paragraph on our
> developer resources page, which summarizes what's required:
>
>    http://chapel.cray.com/developers.html

Okay, I had a look at those links. I guess it's still way too early to make a 
pull request, but I'd appreciate if someone could have a look at the code at 
some point in near future.

>>  I guess that many correctness tests for BlockDist could be easily
>
> modified for this dist. I'd also like to do performance testing versus
> BlockDist.
>
> Sure, any performance test that "uses" BlockDist is great for it. This
> file talks about the support for performance testing that we have:
>
>    doc/developer/bestPractices/TestSystem.txt
>
> The benchmarks whose performance we measure on multiple locales using
> the -perflabel feature of start_test are:
>
>    npb/ep/mcahir/ep.chpl release/examples/benchmarks/hpcc/fft.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/hpcc/hpl.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/hpcc/ptrans.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/hpcc/ra-atomics.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/hpcc/stream-ep.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/hpcc/stream.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/hpcc/ra.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/ssca2/SSCA2_main.chpl
> release/examples/benchmarks/miniMD/miniMD.chpl
> studies/hpcc/HPL/vass/hpl.hpcc2012.chpl
> studies/lulesh/bradc/lulesh-dense.chpl studies/nbody/md.xc-keys

Okay, so there is not a similar framework (as in 
test/distributions/robust/arithmetic you pointed out) for performance tests? 
Also how do you usually do comparisons and track history of of comm diagnostics?

>>  Also, some questions...
>>
>>    - Can I have the assignment of my domain map to be done by
>
> reference? Or would it be best to just generate compiler error in
> dsiAssign, since I can't figure how assign-by-value should be done...
>>    - What is the role of dsiClone? Could I just return "this"?
>
> Think of dsiClone as a copy constructor for your Block class instances,
> and dsiAssign as an assignment operator. Let me know if you need me to
> say more here.
>
> Implementing these two pieces of functionality is important for a
> finished product of a domain map. Afaik however, none of our benchmarks
> use them today. So it is fair to leave them unimplemented for now, and
> focus on the other functionality and performance. Feel free to make them
> compiler errors, for example.

A bit more elaborate description of my problem:

My distribution (for now I call it VariBlock) takes a generic policy object as 
an argument in constructor. That policy object is essentially responsible for 
telling the VariBlock distribution how the data is to be partitioned among the 
locales. Importantly, I would also give a try to implementing a mechanism to 
change how the data is distributed during the execution of the program. In that 
process the instance of policy object wouldn't change (it is/should be a 
const). Currently I think that rebalancing should be initiated by the policy 
object (and possibly by user, by calling some method of the policy object)

The above implies that the policy object is very closely coupled to a domain 
map; Was inheriting of generic classes supported in Chapel, I probably would 
have dismissed the concept of policy objects in favour of creating new policies 
by extending some base class. So, in cloning or in assignment, the difficult 
question is what to do with the policy.

One solution would be to create a copy of the policy object in assignment and 
cloning. However, when it'd come to dynamic balancing of the distribution, some 
way would be needed for the user to acquire a reference to the policy object or 
the domain map (not the dmap wrapped).

Another solution would be that in assignment and cloning both domain maps would 
reference to the same policy object. However, since the behaviour of domain map 
is now controlled by the policy object, in practice those two resulting domain 
maps would be/become identical.

As a side note, the reason I decided to use policy objects is because that 
facilitates easier authoring of distributions in which each locale gets a 
single rectangular, dense (or strided) chunk of data . For example, policy 
resulting in same behaviour as BlockDist is 160 lines of code (and I use 
gratiously whitespaces...), whereas a distribution variable along one axis is 
250 lines, and they are simpler to write than new domain maps.


>>    - Is there a requirement to targetLocDom to have same rank as the 
>> distribution (see BlockDist)? (I _recall_ Brad saying that at least not 
>> intentionlly, but I'm not sure...) I tried changing that, but couldn't get 
>> it compile because of some RAD cache functions.
>
> targetLocDom is an implementation detail that is internal to the Block
> distribution. So I believe there are no requirements about it as far as
> the domain map framework is concerned.
>
> Speaking about the internals of the Block distribution the way it is
> designed, I can see, for example, targetLocDom being 1-d while the
> corresponding domains/arrays being 2-d or more. This would mean that the
> domains/arrays are distributed only along a single dimension. Our Block
> distribution supports this scenario when targetLocDom's extent is 1
> along all but one dimension; we did not write code specific to this case.
>
> Is this what you question is about? If so, yes you can specialize for
> this case, and there may be a way to have the RAD cache compile. I don't
> know off hand what's needed there. It may be easier to support the
> general case instead.

Yes, this is what I'm talking about since I derived my new distribution from 
BlockDist. What I have done so far is what you described, to set all but one 
dimension have length of 1. However, since I would like authoring new policies 
to be as easy as possible, I'd like to have my distribution not to care about 
the rank of targetLocDom and let the author of new policy to decide that.

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