Dear Jeff,
Dear All,

we know about *mpi_yield_when_idle* parameter [1]. We read [2]. You're right,
> if an MPI application is waiting a long time for messages,
> perhaps its message passing algorithm should be re-designed
... but we cannot spur the ParaView/VTK developer to rewrite their software
famous for busy-wait on any user mouse move with N x 100% CPU load [3].

It turned out that
a) (at least some) spin time is on MPI_Barrier call (waitin' user interaction)
b) for Intel MPI and MPICH we found a way to disable this busy wait [4]

c) But, for both 'pvserver' and minimal example (attached), we were not able to
stop the busy waiting with Open MPI: setting *mpi_yield_when_idle* parameter to
'1' just seem to move the spin activity from userland to kernel, with staying at
100%, cf. attached screenshots and [5]. The behaviour is the same for 1.10.4 and
2.0.2.

Well, The Question: is there a way/a chance to effectively disable the busy wait
using Open MPI?

Best,

Paul Kapinos

[1] http://www.open-mpi.de/faq/?category=running#force-aggressive-degraded
[2] 
http://blogs.cisco.com/performance/polling-vs-blocking-message-passingprogress
[3]
https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/Setting_up_a_ParaView_Server#Server_processes_always_have_100.25_CPU_usage
[4]
https://public.kitware.com/pipermail/paraview-developers/2017-October/005587.html
[5]
https://serverfault.com/questions/180711/what-exactly-do-the-colors-in-htop-status-bars-mean



-- 
Dipl.-Inform. Paul Kapinos   -   High Performance Computing,
RWTH Aachen University, IT Center
Seffenter Weg 23,  D 52074  Aachen (Germany)
Tel: +49 241/80-24915
! Paul Kapinos 06.10.2017 - 
! IT Center RWTH Aachen, www.itc.rwth-aachen.de
!
! MPI-busy-waiting-World
!
PROGRAM PK_MPI_Test

USE MPI
IMPLICIT NONE
!include "mpif.h"

INTEGER :: my_MPI_Rank, ierr

CALL MPI_INIT(ierr)
CALL MPI_COMM_RANK( MPI_COMM_WORLD, my_MPI_Rank, ierr )

IF (my_MPI_Rank == 0) CALL Sleep(20)

CALL MPI_BARRIER(MPI_COMM_WORLD, ierr)   ! all but rank=0 processes busy-wait here...
CALL MPI_FINALIZE(ierr)

END PROGRAM PK_MPI_Test

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