1 /*! \page options Simgrid options and configurations
3 A number of options can be given at runtime to change the default
4 SimGrid behavior. For a complete list of all configuration options
5 accepted by the SimGrid version used in your simulator, simply pass
6 the --help configuration flag to your program. If some of the options
7 are not documented on this page, this is a bug that you should please
8 report so that we can fix it. Note that some of the options presented
9 here may not be available in your simulators, depending on the
10 @ref install_src_config "compile-time options" that you used.
12 \section options_using Passing configuration options to the simulators
14 There is several way to pass configuration options to the simulators.
15 The most common way is to use the \c --cfg command line argument. For
16 example, to set the item \c Item to the value \c Value, simply
17 type the following: \verbatim
18 my_simulator --cfg=Item:Value (other arguments)
21 Several \c `--cfg` command line arguments can naturally be used. If you
22 need to include spaces in the argument, don't forget to quote the
23 argument. You can even escape the included quotes (write \' for ' if
24 you have your argument between ').
26 Another solution is to use the \c \<config\> tag in the platform file. The
27 only restriction is that this tag must occure before the first
28 platform element (be it \c \<AS\>, \c \<cluster\>, \c \<peer\> or whatever).
29 The \c \<config\> tag takes an \c id attribute, but it is currently
30 ignored so you don't really need to pass it. The important par is that
31 within that tag, you can pass one or several \c \<prop\> tags to specify
32 the configuration to use. For example, setting \c Item to \c Value
33 can be done by adding the following to the beginning of your platform
37 <prop id="Item" value="Value"/>
41 A last solution is to pass your configuration directly using the C
42 interface. If you happen to use the MSG interface, this is very easy
43 with the MSG_config() function. If you do not use MSG, that's a bit
44 more complex, as you have to mess with the internal configuration set
45 directly as follows. Check the \ref XBT_config "relevant page" for
46 details on all the functions you can use in this context, \c
47 _sg_cfg_set being the only configuration set currently used in
51 #include <xbt/config.h>
53 extern xbt_cfg_t _sg_cfg_set;
55 int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
58 /* Prefer MSG_config() if you use MSG!! */
59 xbt_cfg_set_parse(_sg_cfg_set,"Item:Value");
65 \section options_model Configuring the platform models
67 \anchor options_storage_model
68 \anchor options_vm_workstation_model
69 \subsection options_model_select Selecting the platform models
71 SimGrid comes with several network, CPU and storage models built in, and you
72 can change the used model at runtime by changing the passed
73 configuration. The three main configuration items are given below.
74 For each of these items, passing the special \c help value gives
75 you a short description of all possible values. Also, \c --help-models
76 should provide information about all models for all existing resources.
77 - \b network/model: specify the used network model
78 - \b cpu/model: specify the used CPU model
79 - \b workstation/model: specify the used workstation model
80 - \b storage/model: specify the used storage model (there is currently only one such model - this option is hence only useful for future releases)
81 - \b vm_workstation/model: specify the workstation model for virtual machines (there is currently only one such model - this option is hence only useful for future releases)
83 %As of writing, the following network models are accepted. Over
84 the time new models can be added, and some experimental models can be
85 removed; check the values on your simulators for an uptodate
86 information. Note that the CM02 model is described in the research report
87 <a href="ftp://ftp.ens-lyon.fr/pub/LIP/Rapports/RR/RR2002/RR2002-40.ps.gz">A
88 Network Model for Simulation of Grid Application</a> while LV08 is
90 <a href="http://mescal.imag.fr/membres/arnaud.legrand/articles/simutools09.pdf">Accuracy Study and Improvement of Network Simulation in the SimGrid Framework</a>.
92 - \b LV08 (default one): Realistic network analytic model
93 (slow-start modeled by multiplying latency by 10.4, bandwidth by
94 .92; bottleneck sharing uses a payload of S=8775 for evaluating RTT)
95 - \b Constant: Simplistic network model where all communication
96 take a constant time (one second). This model provides the lowest
97 realism, but is (marginally) faster.
98 - \b SMPI: Realistic network model specifically tailored for HPC
99 settings (accurate modeling of slow start with correction factors on
100 three intervals: < 1KiB, < 64 KiB, >= 64 KiB). See also \ref
101 options_model_network_coefs "this section" for more info.
102 - \b IB: Realistic network model specifically tailored for HPC
103 settings with InfiniBand networks (accurate modeling contention
104 behavior, based on the model explained in
105 http://mescal.imag.fr/membres/jean-marc.vincent/index.html/PhD/Vienne.pdf).
106 See also \ref options_model_network_coefs "this section" for more info.
107 - \b CM02: Legacy network analytic model (Very similar to LV08, but
108 without corrective factors. The timings of small messages are thus
110 - \b Reno: Model from Steven H. Low using lagrange_solve instead of
111 lmm_solve (experts only; check the code for more info).
112 - \b Reno2: Model from Steven H. Low using lagrange_solve instead of
113 lmm_solve (experts only; check the code for more info).
114 - \b Vegas: Model from Steven H. Low using lagrange_solve instead of
115 lmm_solve (experts only; check the code for more info).
117 If you compiled SimGrid accordingly, you can use packet-level network
118 simulators as network models (see \ref pls). In that case, you have
119 two extra models, described below, and some \ref options_pls "specific
120 additional configuration flags".
121 - \b GTNets: Network pseudo-model using the GTNets simulator instead
123 - \b NS3: Network pseudo-model using the NS3 tcp model instead of an
126 Concerning the CPU, we have only one model for now:
127 - \b Cas01: Simplistic CPU model (time=size/power)
129 The workstation concept is the aggregation of a CPU with a network
130 card. Three models exists, but actually, only 2 of them are
131 interesting. The "compound" one is simply due to the way our internal
132 code is organized, and can easily be ignored. So at the end, you have
133 two workstation models: The default one allows to aggregate an
134 existing CPU model with an existing network model, but does not allow
135 parallel tasks because these beasts need some collaboration between
136 the network and CPU model. That is why, ptask_07 is used by default
138 - \b default: Default workstation model. Currently, CPU:Cas01 and
139 network:LV08 (with cross traffic enabled)
140 - \b compound: Workstation model that is automatically chosen if
141 you change the network and CPU models
142 - \b ptask_L07: Workstation model somehow similar to Cas01+CM02 but
143 allowing parallel tasks
145 \subsection options_model_optim Optimization level of the platform models
147 The network and CPU models that are based on lmm_solve (that
148 is, all our analytical models) accept specific optimization
150 - items \b network/optim and \b CPU/optim (both default to 'Lazy'):
151 - \b Lazy: Lazy action management (partial invalidation in lmm +
152 heap in action remaining).
153 - \b TI: Trace integration. Highly optimized mode when using
154 availability traces (only available for the Cas01 CPU model for
156 - \b Full: Full update of remaining and variables. Slow but may be
157 useful when debugging.
158 - items \b network/maxmin_selective_update and
159 \b cpu/maxmin_selective_update: configure whether the underlying
160 should be lazily updated or not. It should have no impact on the
161 computed timings, but should speed up the computation.
163 It is still possible to disable the \c maxmin_selective_update feature
164 because it can reveal counter-productive in very specific scenarios
165 where the interaction level is high. In particular, if all your
166 communication share a given backbone link, you should disable it:
167 without \c maxmin_selective_update, every communications are updated
168 at each step through a simple loop over them. With that feature
169 enabled, every communications will still get updated in this case
170 (because of the dependency induced by the backbone), but through a
171 complicated pattern aiming at following the actual dependencies.
173 \subsection options_model_precision Numerical precision of the platform models
175 The analytical models handle a lot of floating point values. It is
176 possible to change the epsilon used to update and compare them through
177 the \b maxmin/precision item (default value: 0.00001). Changing it
178 may speedup the simulation by discarding very small actions, at the
179 price of a reduced numerical precision.
181 \subsection options_model_nthreads Parallel threads for model updates
183 By default, Surf computes the analytical models sequentially to share their
184 resources and update their actions. It is possible to run them in parallel,
185 using the \b surf/nthreads item (default value: 1). If you use a
186 negative or null value, the amount of available cores is automatically
187 detected and used instead.
189 Depending on the workload of the models and their complexity, you may get a
190 speedup or a slowdown because of the synchronization costs of threads.
192 \subsection options_model_network Configuring the Network model
194 \subsubsection options_model_network_gamma Maximal TCP window size
196 The analytical models need to know the maximal TCP window size to take
197 the TCP congestion mechanism into account. This is set to 20000 by
198 default, but can be changed using the \b network/TCP_gamma item.
200 On linux, this value can be retrieved using the following
201 commands. Both give a set of values, and you should use the last one,
202 which is the maximal size.\verbatim
203 cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem # gives the sender window
204 cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_wmem # gives the receiver window
207 \subsubsection options_model_network_coefs Correcting important network parameters
209 SimGrid can take network irregularities such as a slow startup or
210 changing behavior depending on the message size into account.
211 You should not change these values unless you really know what you're doing.
213 The corresponding values were computed through data fitting one the
214 timings of packet-level simulators.
217 <a href="http://mescal.imag.fr/membres/arnaud.legrand/articles/simutools09.pdf">Accuracy Study and Improvement of Network Simulation in the SimGrid Framework</a>
218 for more information about these parameters.
220 If you are using the SMPI model, these correction coefficients are
221 themselves corrected by constant values depending on the size of the
222 exchange. Again, only hardcore experts should bother about this fact.
224 InfiniBand network behavior can be modeled through 3 parameters, as explained in
225 <a href="http://mescal.imag.fr/membres/jean-marc.vincent/index.html/PhD/Vienne.pdf">this PhD thesis</a>.
226 These factors can be changed through the following option:
229 smpi/IB_penalty_factors:"βe;βs;γs"
232 By default SMPI uses factors computed on the Stampede Supercomputer at TACC, with optimal
233 deployment of processes on nodes.
235 \subsubsection options_model_network_crosstraffic Simulating cross-traffic
237 %As of SimGrid v3.7, cross-traffic effects can be taken into account in
238 analytical simulations. It means that ongoing and incoming
239 communication flows are treated independently. In addition, the LV08
240 model adds 0.05 of usage on the opposite direction for each new
241 created flow. This can be useful to simulate some important TCP
242 phenomena such as ack compression.
244 For that to work, your platform must have two links for each
245 pair of interconnected hosts. An example of usable platform is
246 available in <tt>examples/msg/gtnets/crosstraffic-p.xml</tt>.
248 This is activated through the \b network/crosstraffic item, that
249 can be set to 0 (disable this feature) or 1 (enable it).
251 Note that with the default workstation model this option is activated by default.
253 \subsubsection options_model_network_coord Coordinated-based network models
255 When you want to use network coordinates, as it happens when you use
256 an \<AS\> in your platform file with \c Vivaldi as a routing, you must
257 set the \b network/coordinates to \c yes so that all mandatory
258 initialization are done in the simulator.
260 \subsubsection options_model_network_sendergap Simulating sender gap
262 (this configuration item is experimental and may change or disapear)
264 It is possible to specify a timing gap between consecutive emission on
265 the same network card through the \b network/sender_gap item. This
266 is still under investigation as of writting, and the default value is
267 to wait 10 microseconds (1e-5 seconds) between emissions.
269 \subsubsection options_model_network_asyncsend Simulating asyncronous send
271 (this configuration item is experimental and may change or disapear)
273 It is possible to specify that messages below a certain size will be sent
274 as soon as the call to MPI_Send is issued, without waiting for the
275 correspondant receive. This threshold can be configured through the
276 \b smpi/async_small_thres item. The default value is 0. This behavior can also be
277 manually set for MSG mailboxes, by setting the receiving mode of the mailbox
278 with a call to \ref MSG_mailbox_set_async . For MSG, all messages sent to this
279 mailbox will have this behavior, so consider using two mailboxes if needed.
281 This value needs to be smaller than or equals to the threshold set at
282 \ref options_model_smpi_detached , because asynchronous messages are
283 meant to be detached as well.
285 \subsubsection options_pls Configuring packet-level pseudo-models
287 When using the packet-level pseudo-models, several specific
288 configuration flags are provided to configure the associated tools.
289 There is by far not enough such SimGrid flags to cover every aspects
290 of the associated tools, since we only added the items that we
291 needed ourselves. Feel free to request more items (or even better:
292 provide patches adding more items).
294 When using NS3, the only existing item is \b ns3/TcpModel,
295 corresponding to the ns3::TcpL4Protocol::SocketType configuration item
296 in NS3. The only valid values (enforced on the SimGrid side) are
297 'NewReno' or 'Reno' or 'Tahoe'.
299 When using GTNeTS, two items exist:
300 - \b gtnets/jitter, that is a double value to oscillate
301 the link latency, uniformly in random interval
302 [-latency*gtnets_jitter,latency*gtnets_jitter). It defaults to 0.
303 - \b gtnets/jitter_seed, the positive seed used to reproduce jitted
304 results. Its value must be in [1,1e8] and defaults to 10.
306 \section options_modelchecking Configuring the Model-Checking
308 To enable the experimental SimGrid model-checking support the program should
309 be executed with the command line argument
314 Safety properties are expressed as assertions using the function
316 void MC_assert(int prop);
319 \subsection options_modelchecking_liveness Specifying a liveness property
321 If you want to specify liveness properties (beware, that's
322 experimental), you have to pass them on the command line, specifying
323 the name of the file containing the property, as formatted by the
327 --cfg=model-check/property:<filename>
330 Of course, specifying a liveness property enables the model-checking
331 so that you don't have to give <tt>--cfg=model-check:1</tt> in
334 \subsection options_modelchecking_steps Going for stateful verification
336 By default, the system is backtracked to its initial state to explore
337 another path instead of backtracking to the exact step before the fork
338 that we want to explore (this is called stateless verification). This
339 is done this way because saving intermediate states can rapidly
340 exhaust the available memory. If you want, you can change the value of
341 the <tt>model-check/checkpoint</tt> variable. For example, the
342 following configuration will ask to take a checkpoint every step.
343 Beware, this will certainly explode your memory. Larger values are
344 probably better, make sure to experiment a bit to find the right
345 setting for your specific system.
348 --cfg=model-check/checkpoint:1
351 Of course, specifying this option enables the model-checking so that
352 you don't have to give <tt>--cfg=model-check:1</tt> in addition.
354 \subsection options_modelchecking_reduction Specifying the kind of reduction
356 The main issue when using the model-checking is the state space
357 explosion. To counter that problem, several exploration reduction
358 techniques can be used. There is unfortunately no silver bullet here,
359 and the most efficient reduction techniques cannot be applied to any
360 properties. In particular, the DPOR method cannot be applied on
361 liveness properties since it may break some cycles in the exploration
362 that are important to the property validity.
365 --cfg=model-check/reduction:<technique>
368 For now, this configuration variable can take 2 values:
369 * none: Do not apply any kind of reduction (mandatory for now for
371 * dpor: Apply Dynamic Partial Ordering Reduction. Only valid if you
372 verify local safety properties.
374 Of course, specifying a reduction technique enables the model-checking
375 so that you don't have to give <tt>--cfg=model-check:1</tt> in
378 \subsection options_modelchecking_visited model-check/visited, Cycle detection
380 In order to detect cycles, the model-checker needs to check if a new explored
381 state is in fact the same state than a previous one. In order to do this,
382 the model-checker can take a snapshot of each visited state: this snapshot is
383 then used to compare it with subsequent states in the exploration graph.
385 The \b model-check/visited is the maximum number of states which are stored in
386 memory. If the maximum number of snapshotted state is reached some states will
387 be removed from the memory and some cycles might be missed.
389 By default, no state is snapshotted and cycles cannot be detected.
391 \subsection options_modelchecking_termination model-check/termination, Non termination detection
393 The \b model-check/termination configuration item can be used to report if a
394 non-termination execution path has been found. This is a path with a cycle
395 which means that the program might never terminate.
397 This only works in safety mode.
399 This options is disabled by default.
401 \subsection options_modelchecking_dot_output model-check/dot_output, Dot output
403 If set, the \b model-check/dot_output configuration item is the name of a file
404 in which to write a dot file of the path leading the found property (safety or
405 liveness violation) as well as the cycle for liveness properties. This dot file
406 can then fed to the graphviz dot tool to generate an corresponding graphical
409 \subsection options_modelchecking_max_depth model-check/max_depth, Depth limit
411 The \b model-checker/max_depth can set the maximum depth of the exploration
412 graph of the model-checker. If this limit is reached, a logging message is
413 sent and the results might not be exact.
415 By default, there is not depth limit.
417 \subsection options_modelchecking_timeout Handling of timeout
419 By default, the model-checker does not handle timeout conditions: the `wait`
420 operations never time out. With the \b model-check/timeout configuration item
421 set to \b yes, the model-checker will explore timeouts of `wait` operations.
423 \subsection options_modelchecking_comm_determinism Communication determinism
425 The \b model-check/communications_determinism and
426 \b model-check/send_determinism items can be used to select the communication
427 determinism mode of the model-checker which checks determinism properties of
428 the communications of an application.
430 \subsection options_modelchecking_sparse_checkpoint Per page checkpoints
432 When the model-checker is configured to take a snapshot of each explored state
433 (with the \b model-checker/visited item), the memory consumption can rapidly
434 reach GiB ou Tib of memory. However, for many workloads, the memory does not
435 change much between different snapshots and taking a complete copy of each
436 snapshot is a waste of memory.
438 The \b model-check/sparse-checkpoint option item can be set to \b yes in order
439 to avoid making a complete copy of each snapshot: instead, each snapshot will be
440 decomposed in blocks which will be stored separately.
441 If multiple snapshots share the same block (or if the same block
442 is used in the same snapshot), the same copy of the block will be shared leading
443 to a reduction of the memory footprint.
445 For many applications, this option considerably reduces the memory consumption.
446 In somes cases, the model-checker might be slightly slower because of the time
447 taken to manage the metadata about the blocks. In other cases however, this
448 snapshotting strategy will be much faster by reducing the cache consumption.
449 When the memory consumption is important, by avoiding to hit the swap or
450 reducing the swap usage, this option might be much faster than the basic
451 snapshotting strategy.
453 This option is currently disabled by default.
455 \subsection options_mc_perf Performance considerations for the model checker
457 The size of the stacks can have a huge impact on the memory
458 consumption when using model-checking. By default, each snapshot will
459 save a copy of the whole stacks and not only of the part which is
460 really meaningful: you should expect the contribution of the memory
461 consumption of the snapshots to be \f$ \mbox{number of processes}
462 \times \mbox{stack size} \times \mbox{number of states} \f$.
464 The \b model-check/sparse-checkpoint can be used to reduce the memory
465 consumption by trying to share memory between the different snapshots.
467 When compiled against the model checker, the stacks are not
468 protected with guards: if the stack size is too small for your
469 application, the stack will silently overflow on other parts of the
472 \subsection options_modelchecking_hash Hashing of the state (experimental)
474 Usually most of the time of the model-checker is spent comparing states. This
475 process is complicated and consumes a lot of bandwidth and cache.
476 In order to speedup the state comparison, the experimental \b model-checker/hash
477 configuration item enables the computation of a hash summarizing as much
478 information of the state as possible into a single value. This hash can be used
479 to avoid most of the comparisons: the costly comparison is then only used when
480 the hashes are identical.
482 Currently most of the state is not included in the hash because the
483 implementation was found to be buggy and this options is not as useful as
484 it could be. For this reason, it is currently disabled by default.
486 \subsection options_modelchecking_recordreplay Record/replay (experimental)
488 As the model-checker keeps jumping at different places in the execution graph,
489 it is difficult to understand what happens when trying to debug an application
490 under the model-checker. Event the output of the program is difficult to
491 interpret. Moreover, the model-checker does not behave nicely with advanced
492 debugging tools such as valgrind. For those reason, to identify a trajectory
493 in the execution graph with the model-checker and replay this trajcetory and
494 without the model-checker black-magic but with more standard tools
495 (such as a debugger, valgrind, etc.). For this reason, Simgrid implements an
496 experimental record/replay functionnality in order to record a trajectory with
497 the model-checker and replay it without the model-checker.
499 When the model-checker finds an interesting path in the application execution
500 graph (where a safety or liveness property is violated), it can generate an
501 identifier for this path. In order to enable this behavious the
502 \b model-check/record must be set to \b yes. By default, this behaviour is not
505 This is an example of output:
508 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Check a safety property
509 [ 0.000000] (0:@) **************************
510 [ 0.000000] (0:@) *** PROPERTY NOT VALID ***
511 [ 0.000000] (0:@) **************************
512 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Counter-example execution trace:
513 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Path = 1/3;1/4
514 [ 0.000000] (0:@) [(1)Tremblay (app)] MC_RANDOM(3)
515 [ 0.000000] (0:@) [(1)Tremblay (app)] MC_RANDOM(4)
516 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Expanded states = 27
517 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Visited states = 68
518 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Executed transitions = 46
521 This path can then be replayed outside of the model-checker (and even in
522 non-MC build of simgrid) by setting the \b model-check/replay item to the given
523 path. The other options should be the same (but the model-checker should
526 The format and meaning of the path may change between different releases so
527 the same release of Simgrid should be used for the record phase and the replay
530 \section options_virt Configuring the User Process Virtualization
532 \subsection options_virt_factory Selecting the virtualization factory
534 In SimGrid, the user code is virtualized in a specific mecanism
535 allowing the simulation kernel to control its execution: when a user
536 process requires a blocking action (such as sending a message), it is
537 interrupted, and only gets released when the simulated clock reaches
538 the point where the blocking operation is done.
540 In SimGrid, the containers in which user processes are virtualized are
541 called contexts. Several context factory are provided, and you can
542 select the one you want to use with the \b contexts/factory
543 configuration item. Some of the following may not exist on your
544 machine because of portability issues. In any case, the default one
545 should be the most effcient one (please report bugs if the
546 auto-detection fails for you). They are sorted here from the slowest
548 - \b thread: very slow factory using full featured threads (either
549 pthreads or windows native threads)
550 - \b ucontext: fast factory using System V contexts (or a portability
551 layer of our own on top of Windows fibers)
552 - \b raw: amazingly fast factory using a context switching mecanism
553 of our own, directly implemented in assembly (only available for x86
554 and amd64 platforms for now)
556 The only reason to change this setting is when the debugging tools get
557 fooled by the optimized context factories. Threads are the most
558 debugging-friendly contextes, as they allow to set breakpoints anywhere with gdb
559 and visualize backtraces for all processes, in order to debug concurrency issues.
560 Valgrind is also more comfortable with threads, but it should be usable with all factories.
562 \subsection options_virt_stacksize Adapting the used stack size
564 Each virtualized used process is executed using a specific system
565 stack. The size of this stack has a huge impact on the simulation
566 scalability, but its default value is rather large. This is because
567 the error messages that you get when the stack size is too small are
568 rather disturbing: this leads to stack overflow (overwriting other
569 stacks), leading to segfaults with corrupted stack traces.
571 If you want to push the scalability limits of your code, you might
572 want to reduce the \b contexts/stack_size item. Its default value
573 is 8192 (in KiB), while our Chord simulation works with stacks as small
574 as 16 KiB, for example. For the thread factory, the default value
575 is the one of the system, if it is too large/small, it has to be set
578 The operating system should only allocate memory for the pages of the
579 stack which are actually used and you might not need to use this in
580 most cases. However, this setting is very important when using the
581 model checker (see \ref options_mc_perf).
583 In some cases, no stack guard page is used and the stack will silently
584 overflow on other parts of the memory if the stack size is too small
585 for your application. This happens :
587 - on Windows systems;
588 - when the model checker is enabled;
589 - when stack guard pages are explicitely disabled (see \ref options_perf_guard_size).
591 \subsection options_virt_parallel Running user code in parallel
593 Parallel execution of the user code is only considered stable in
594 SimGrid v3.7 and higher. It is described in
595 <a href="http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00602216/">INRIA RR-7653</a>.
597 If you are using the \c ucontext or \c raw context factories, you can
598 request to execute the user code in parallel. Several threads are
599 launched, each of them handling as much user contexts at each run. To
600 actiave this, set the \b contexts/nthreads item to the amount of
601 cores that you have in your computer (or lower than 1 to have
602 the amount of cores auto-detected).
604 Even if you asked several worker threads using the previous option,
605 you can request to start the parallel execution (and pay the
606 associated synchronization costs) only if the potential parallelism is
607 large enough. For that, set the \b contexts/parallel_threshold
608 item to the minimal amount of user contexts needed to start the
609 parallel execution. In any given simulation round, if that amount is
610 not reached, the contexts will be run sequentially directly by the
611 main thread (thus saving the synchronization costs). Note that this
612 option is mainly useful when the grain of the user code is very fine,
613 because our synchronization is now very efficient.
615 When parallel execution is activated, you can choose the
616 synchronization schema used with the \b contexts/synchro item,
617 which value is either:
618 - \b futex: ultra optimized synchronisation schema, based on futexes
619 (fast user-mode mutexes), and thus only available on Linux systems.
620 This is the default mode when available.
621 - \b posix: slow but portable synchronisation using only POSIX
623 - \b busy_wait: not really a synchronisation: the worker threads
624 constantly request new contexts to execute. It should be the most
625 efficient synchronisation schema, but it loads all the cores of your
626 machine for no good reason. You probably prefer the other less
629 \section options_tracing Configuring the tracing subsystem
631 The \ref tracing "tracing subsystem" can be configured in several
632 different ways depending on the nature of the simulator (MSG, SimDag,
633 SMPI) and the kind of traces that need to be obtained. See the \ref
634 tracing_tracing_options "Tracing Configuration Options subsection" to
635 get a detailed description of each configuration option.
637 We detail here a simple way to get the traces working for you, even if
638 you never used the tracing API.
641 - Any SimGrid-based simulator (MSG, SimDag, SMPI, ...) and raw traces:
643 --cfg=tracing:yes --cfg=tracing/uncategorized:yes --cfg=triva/uncategorized:uncat.plist
645 The first parameter activates the tracing subsystem, the second
646 tells it to trace host and link utilization (without any
647 categorization) and the third creates a graph configuration file
648 to configure Triva when analysing the resulting trace file.
650 - MSG or SimDag-based simulator and categorized traces (you need to declare categories and classify your tasks according to them)
652 --cfg=tracing:yes --cfg=tracing/categorized:yes --cfg=triva/categorized:cat.plist
654 The first parameter activates the tracing subsystem, the second
655 tells it to trace host and link categorized utilization and the
656 third creates a graph configuration file to configure Triva when
657 analysing the resulting trace file.
659 - SMPI simulator and traces for a space/time view:
663 The <i>-trace</i> parameter for the smpirun script runs the
664 simulation with --cfg=tracing:yes and --cfg=tracing/smpi:yes. Check the
665 smpirun's <i>-help</i> parameter for additional tracing options.
667 Sometimes you might want to put additional information on the trace to
668 correctly identify them later, or to provide data that can be used to
669 reproduce an experiment. You have two ways to do that:
671 - Add a string on top of the trace file as comment:
673 --cfg=tracing/comment:my_simulation_identifier
676 - Add the contents of a textual file on top of the trace file as comment:
678 --cfg=tracing/comment_file:my_file_with_additional_information.txt
681 Please, use these two parameters (for comments) to make reproducible
682 simulations. For additional details about this and all tracing
683 options, check See the \ref tracing_tracing_options.
685 \section options_msg Configuring MSG
687 \subsection options_msg_debug_multiple_use Debugging MSG
689 Sometimes your application may try to send a task that is still being
690 executed somewhere else, making it impossible to send this task. However,
691 for debugging purposes, one may want to know what the other host is/was
692 doing. This option shows a backtrace of the other process.
694 Enable this option by adding
697 --cfg=msg/debug_multiple_use:on
700 \section options_smpi Configuring SMPI
702 The SMPI interface provides several specific configuration items.
703 These are uneasy to see since the code is usually launched through the
704 \c smiprun script directly.
706 \subsection options_smpi_bench smpi/bench: Automatic benchmarking of SMPI code
708 In SMPI, the sequential code is automatically benchmarked, and these
709 computations are automatically reported to the simulator. That is to
710 say that if you have a large computation between a \c MPI_Recv() and a
711 \c MPI_Send(), SMPI will automatically benchmark the duration of this
712 code, and create an execution task within the simulator to take this
713 into account. For that, the actual duration is measured on the host
714 machine and then scaled to the power of the corresponding simulated
715 machine. The variable \b smpi/running_power allows to specify the
716 computational power of the host machine (in flop/s) to use when
717 scaling the execution times. It defaults to 20000, but you really want
718 to update it to get accurate simulation results.
720 When the code is constituted of numerous consecutive MPI calls, the
721 previous mechanism feeds the simulation kernel with numerous tiny
722 computations. The \b smpi/cpu_threshold item becomes handy when this
723 impacts badly the simulation performance. It specifies a threshold (in
724 seconds) below which the execution chunks are not reported to the
725 simulation kernel (default value: 1e-6).
729 The option smpi/cpu_threshold ignores any computation time spent
730 below this threshold. SMPI does not consider the \a amount of these
731 computations; there is no offset for this. Hence, by using a
732 value that is too low, you may end up with unreliable simulation
735 In some cases, however, one may wish to disable simulation of
736 application computation. This is the case when SMPI is used not to
737 simulate an MPI applications, but instead an MPI code that performs
738 "live replay" of another MPI app (e.g., ScalaTrace's replay tool,
739 various on-line simulators that run an app at scale). In this case the
740 computation of the replay/simulation logic should not be simulated by
741 SMPI. Instead, the replay tool or on-line simulator will issue
742 "computation events", which correspond to the actual MPI simulation
743 being replayed/simulated. At the moment, these computation events can
744 be simulated using SMPI by calling internal smpi_execute*() functions.
746 To disable the benchmarking/simulation of computation in the simulated
747 application, the variable \b
748 smpi/simulation_computation should be set to no
750 \subsection options_model_smpi_bw_factor smpi/bw_factor: Bandwidth factors
752 The possible throughput of network links is often dependent on the
753 message sizes, as protocols may adapt to different message sizes. With
754 this option, a series of message sizes and factors are given, helping
755 the simulation to be more realistic. For instance, the current
759 65472:0.940694;15424:0.697866;9376:0.58729;5776:1.08739;3484:0.77493;1426:0.608902;732:0.341987;257:0.338112;0:0.812084
762 So, messages with size 65472 and more will get a total of MAX_BANDWIDTH*0.940694,
763 messages of size 15424 to 65471 will get MAX_BANDWIDTH*0.697866 and so on.
764 Here, MAX_BANDWIDTH denotes the bandwidth of the link.
767 The SimGrid-Team has developed a script to help you determine these
768 values. You can find more information and the download here:
769 1. http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/contrib/smpi-calibration-doc.html
770 2. http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/contrib/smpi-saturation-doc.html
772 \subsection options_smpi_timing smpi/display_timing: Reporting simulation time
774 \b Default: 0 (false)
776 Most of the time, you run MPI code through SMPI to compute the time it
777 would take to run it on a platform that you don't have. But since the
778 code is run through the \c smpirun script, you don't have any control
779 on the launcher code, making difficult to report the simulated time
780 when the simulation ends. If you set the \b smpi/display_timing item
781 to 1, \c smpirun will display this information when the simulation ends. \verbatim
782 Simulation time: 1e3 seconds.
785 \subsection options_model_smpi_lat_factor smpi/lat_factor: Latency factors
787 The motivation and syntax for this option is identical to the motivation/syntax
788 of smpi/bw_factor, see \ref options_model_smpi_bw_factor for details.
790 There is an important difference, though: While smpi/bw_factor \a reduces the
791 actual bandwidth (i.e., values between 0 and 1 are valid), latency factors
792 increase the latency, i.e., values larger than or equal to 1 are valid here.
794 This is the default value:
797 65472:11.6436;15424:3.48845;9376:2.59299;5776:2.18796;3484:1.88101;1426:1.61075;732:1.9503;257:1.95341;0:2.01467
801 The SimGrid-Team has developed a script to help you determine these
802 values. You can find more information and the download here:
803 1. http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/contrib/smpi-calibration-doc.html
804 2. http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/contrib/smpi-saturation-doc.html
806 \subsection options_smpi_global smpi/privatize_global_variables: Automatic privatization of global variables
808 MPI executables are meant to be executed in separated processes, but SMPI is
809 executed in only one process. Global variables from executables will be placed
810 in the same memory zone and shared between processes, causing hard to find bugs.
811 To avoid this, several options are possible :
812 - Manual edition of the code, for example to add __thread keyword before data
813 declaration, which allows the resulting code to work with SMPI, but only
814 if the thread factory (see \ref options_virt_factory) is used, as global
815 variables are then placed in the TLS (thread local storage) segment.
816 - Source-to-source transformation, to add a level of indirection
817 to the global variables. SMPI does this for F77 codes compiled with smpiff,
818 and used to provide coccinelle scripts for C codes, which are not functional anymore.
819 - Compilation pass, to have the compiler automatically put the data in
821 - Runtime automatic switching of the data segments. SMPI stores a copy of
822 each global data segment for each process, and at each context switch replaces
823 the actual data with its copy from the right process. This mechanism uses mmap,
824 and is for now limited to systems supporting this functionnality (all Linux
825 and some BSD should be compatible).
826 Another limitation is that SMPI only accounts for global variables defined in
827 the executable. If the processes use external global variables from dynamic
828 libraries, they won't be switched correctly. To avoid this, using static
829 linking is advised (but not with the simgrid library, to avoid replicating
830 its own global variables).
832 To use this runtime automatic switching, the variable \b smpi/privatize_global_variables
837 \subsection options_model_smpi_detached Simulating MPI detached send
839 This threshold specifies the size in bytes under which the send will return
840 immediately. This is different from the threshold detailed in \ref options_model_network_asyncsend
841 because the message is not effectively sent when the send is posted. SMPI still waits for the
842 correspondant receive to be posted to perform the communication operation. This threshold can be set
843 by changing the \b smpi/send_is_detached item. The default value is 65536.
845 \subsection options_model_smpi_collectives Simulating MPI collective algorithms
847 SMPI implements more than 100 different algorithms for MPI collective communication, to accurately
848 simulate the behavior of most of the existing MPI libraries. The \b smpi/coll_selector item can be used
849 to use the decision logic of either OpenMPI or MPICH libraries (values: ompi or mpich, by default SMPI
850 uses naive version of collective operations). Each collective operation can be manually selected with a
851 \b smpi/collective_name:algo_name. Available algorithms are listed in \ref SMPI_collective_algorithms .
853 \subsection options_model_smpi_iprobe smpi/iprobe: Inject constant times for calls to MPI_Iprobe
855 \b Default value: 0.0001
857 The behavior and motivation for this configuration option is identical with \a smpi/test, see
858 Section \ref options_model_smpi_test for details.
860 \subsection options_model_smpi_ois smpi/ois: Inject constant times for asynchronous send operations
862 This configuration option works exactly as \a smpi/os, see Section \ref options_model_smpi_os.
863 Of course, \a smpi/ois is used to account for MPI_Isend instead of MPI_Send.
865 \subsection options_model_smpi_os smpi/os: Inject constant times for send operations
867 In several network models such as LogP, send (MPI_Send, MPI_Isend) and receive (MPI_Recv)
868 operations incur costs (i.e., they consume CPU time). SMPI can factor these costs in as well, but the
869 user has to configure SMPI accordingly as these values may vary by machine.
870 This can be done by using smpi/os for MPI_Send operations; for MPI_Isend and
871 MPI_Recv, use \a smpi/ois and \a smpi/or, respectively. These work exactly as
874 \a smpi/os can consist of multiple sections; each section takes three values, for example:
880 Here, the sections are divided by ";" (that is, this example contains two sections).
881 Furthermore, each section consists of three values.
883 1. The first value denotes the minimum size for this section to take effect;
884 read it as "if message size is greater than this value (and other section has a larger
885 first value that is also smaller than the message size), use this".
886 In the first section above, this value is "1".
888 2. The second value is the startup time; this is a constant value that will always
889 be charged, no matter what the size of the message. In the first section above,
892 3. The third value is the \a per-byte cost. That is, it is charged for every
893 byte of the message (incurring cost messageSize*cost_per_byte)
894 and hence accounts also for larger messages. In the first
895 section of the example above, this value is "2".
897 Now, SMPI always checks which section it should take for a given message; that is,
898 if a message of size 11 is sent with the configuration of the example above, only
899 the second section will be used, not the first, as the first value of the second
900 section is closer to the message size. Hence, a message of size 11 incurs the
901 following cost inside MPI_Send:
907 %As 5 is the startup cost and 1 is the cost per byte.
910 The order of sections can be arbitrary; they will be ordered internally.
912 \subsection options_model_smpi_or smpi/or: Inject constant times for receive operations
914 This configuration option works exactly as \a smpi/os, see Section \ref options_model_smpi_os.
915 Of course, \a smpi/or is used to account for MPI_Recv instead of MPI_Send.
917 \subsection options_model_smpi_test smpi/test: Inject constant times for calls to MPI_Test
919 \b Default value: 0.0001
921 By setting this option, you can control the amount of time a process sleeps
922 when MPI_Test() is called; this is important, because SimGrid normally only
923 advances the time while communication is happening and thus,
924 MPI_Test will not add to the time, resulting in a deadlock if used as a
931 MPI_Test(request, flag, status);
937 Internally, in order to speed up execution, we use a counter to keep track
938 on how often we already checked if the handle is now valid or not. Hence, we
939 actually use counter*SLEEP_TIME, that is, the time MPI_Test() causes the process
940 to sleep increases linearly with the number of previously failed testk.
943 \subsection options_model_smpi_use_shared_malloc smpi/use_shared_malloc: Use shared memory
947 SMPI can use shared memory by calling shm_* functions; this might speed up the simulation.
948 This opens or creates a new POSIX shared memory object, kept in RAM, in /dev/shm.
950 If you want to disable this behavior, set the value to 0.
952 \subsection options_model_smpi_wtime smpi/wtime: Inject constant times for calls to MPI_Wtime
956 By setting this option, you can control the amount of time a process sleeps
957 when MPI_Wtime() is called; this is important, because SimGrid normally only
958 advances the time while communication is happening and thus,
959 MPI_Wtime will not add to the time, resulting in a deadlock if used as a
965 while(MPI_Wtime() < some_time_bound) {
970 If the time is never advanced, this loop will clearly never end as MPI_Wtime()
971 always returns the same value. Hence, pass a (small) value to the smpi/wtime
972 option to force a call to MPI_Wtime to advance the time as well.
975 \section options_generic Configuring other aspects of SimGrid
977 \subsection options_generic_clean_atexit Cleanup before termination
979 The C / C++ standard contains a function called \b [atexit](http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstdlib/atexit/).
980 atexit registers callbacks, which are called just before the program terminates.
982 By setting the configuration option clean_atexit to 1 (true), a callback
983 is registered and will clean up some variables and terminate/cleanup the tracing.
985 TODO: Add when this should be used.
987 \subsection options_generic_path XML file inclusion path
989 It is possible to specify a list of directories to search into for the
990 \<include\> tag in XML files by using the \b path configuration
991 item. To add several directory to the path, set the configuration
992 item several times, as in \verbatim
993 --cfg=path:toto --cfg=path:tutu
996 \subsection options_generic_exit Behavior on Ctrl-C
998 By default, when Ctrl-C is pressed, the status of all existing
999 simulated processes is displayed before exiting the simulation. This is very useful to debug your
1000 code, but it can reveal troublesome in some cases (such as when the
1001 amount of processes becomes really big). This behavior is disabled
1002 when \b verbose-exit is set to 0 (it is to 1 by default).
1004 \subsection options_exception_cutpath Truncate local path from exception backtrace
1006 <b>This configuration option is an internal option and should normally not be used
1007 by the user.</b> It is used to remove the path from the backtrace
1008 shown when an exception is thrown; if we didn't remove this part, the tests
1009 testing the exception parts of simgrid would fail on most machines, as we are
1010 currently comparing output. Clearly, the path used on different machines are almost
1011 guaranteed to be different and hence, the output would
1012 mismatch, causing the test to fail.
1014 \section options_log Logging Configuration
1016 It can be done by using XBT. Go to \ref XBT_log for more details.
1018 \section options_perf Performance optimizations
1020 \subsection options_perf_context Context factory
1022 In order to achieve higher performance, you might want to use the raw
1023 context factory which avoids any system call when switching between
1024 tasks. If it is not possible you might use ucontext instead.
1026 \subsection options_perf_guard_size Disabling stack guard pages
1028 A stack guard page is usually used which prevents the stack from
1029 overflowing on other parts of the memory. However this might have a
1030 performance impact if a huge number of processes is created. The
1031 option \b contexts:guard_size is the number of stack guard pages
1032 used. By setting it to 0, no guard pages will be used: in this case,
1033 you should avoid using small stacks (\b stack_size) as the stack will
1034 silently overflow on other parts of the memory.
1036 \section options_index Index of all existing configuration options
1039 Almost all options are defined in <i>src/simgrid/sg_config.c</i>. You may
1040 want to check this file, too, but this index should be somewhat complete
1041 for the moment (May 2015).
1044 \b Please \b note: You can also pass the command-line option "--help" and
1045 "--help-cfg" to an executable that uses simgrid.
1047 - \c clean_atexit: \ref options_generic_clean_atexit
1049 - \c contexts/factory: \ref options_virt_factory
1050 - \c contexts/guard_size: \ref options_virt_parallel
1051 - \c contexts/nthreads: \ref options_virt_parallel
1052 - \c contexts/parallel_threshold: \ref options_virt_parallel
1053 - \c contexts/stack_size: \ref options_virt_stacksize
1054 - \c contexts/synchro: \ref options_virt_parallel
1056 - \c cpu/maxmin_selective_update: \ref options_model_optim
1057 - \c cpu/model: \ref options_model_select
1058 - \c cpu/optim: \ref options_model_optim
1060 - \c exception/cutpath: \ref options_exception_cutpath
1062 - \c gtnets/jitter: \ref options_pls
1063 - \c gtnets/jitter_seed: \ref options_pls
1065 - \c maxmin/precision: \ref options_model_precision
1067 - \c msg/debug_multiple_use: \ref options_msg_debug_multiple_use
1069 - \c model-check: \ref options_modelchecking
1070 - \c model-check/checkpoint: \ref options_modelchecking_steps
1071 - \c model-check/communications_determinism: \ref options_modelchecking_comm_determinism
1072 - \c model-check/send_determinism: \ref options_modelchecking_comm_determinism
1073 - \c model-check/dot_output: \ref options_modelchecking_dot_output
1074 - \c model-check/hash: \ref options_modelchecking_hash
1075 - \c model-check/property: \ref options_modelchecking_liveness
1076 - \c model-check/max_depth: \ref options_modelchecking_max_depth
1077 - \c model-check/record: \ref options_modelchecking_recordreplay
1078 - \c model-check/reduction: \ref options_modelchecking_reduction
1079 - \c model-check/replay: \ref options_modelchecking_recordreplay
1080 - \c model-check/send_determinism: \ref options_modelchecking_sparse_checkpoint
1081 - \c model-check/sparse-checkpoint: \ref options_modelchecking_sparse_checkpoint
1082 - \c model-check/termination: \ref options_modelchecking_termination
1083 - \c model-check/timeout: \ref options_modelchecking_timeout
1084 - \c model-check/visited: \ref options_modelchecking_visited
1086 - \c network/bandwidth_factor: \ref options_model_network_coefs
1087 - \c network/coordinates: \ref options_model_network_coord
1088 - \c network/crosstraffic: \ref options_model_network_crosstraffic
1089 - \c network/latency_factor: \ref options_model_network_coefs
1090 - \c network/maxmin_selective_update: \ref options_model_optim
1091 - \c network/model: \ref options_model_select
1092 - \c network/optim: \ref options_model_optim
1093 - \c network/sender_gap: \ref options_model_network_sendergap
1094 - \c network/TCP_gamma: \ref options_model_network_gamma
1095 - \c network/weight_S: \ref options_model_network_coefs
1097 - \c ns3/TcpModel: \ref options_pls
1099 - \c surf/nthreads: \ref options_model_nthreads
1100 - \c surf/precision: \ref options_model_precision
1102 - \c <b>For collective operations of SMPI, please refer to Section \ref options_index_smpi_coll</b>
1103 - \c smpi/async_small_thres: \ref options_model_network_asyncsend
1104 - \c smpi/bw_factor: \ref options_model_smpi_bw_factor
1105 - \c smpi/coll_selector: \ref options_model_smpi_collectives
1106 - \c smpi/cpu_threshold: \ref options_smpi_bench
1107 - \c smpi/display_timing: \ref options_smpi_timing
1108 - \c smpi/lat_factor: \ref options_model_smpi_lat_factor
1109 - \c smpi/IB_penalty_factors: \ref options_model_network_coefs
1110 - \c smpi/iprobe: \ref options_model_smpi_iprobe
1111 - \c smpi/ois: \ref options_model_smpi_ois
1112 - \c smpi/or: \ref options_model_smpi_or
1113 - \c smpi/os: \ref options_model_smpi_os
1114 - \c smpi/privatize_global_variables: \ref options_smpi_global
1115 - \c smpi/running_power: \ref options_smpi_bench
1116 - \c smpi/send_is_detached_thresh: \ref options_model_smpi_detached
1117 - \c smpi/simulation_computation: \ref options_smpi_bench
1118 - \c smpi/test: \ref options_model_smpi_test
1119 - \c smpi/use_shared_malloc: \ref options_model_smpi_use_shared_malloc
1120 - \c smpi/wtime: \ref options_model_smpi_wtime
1122 - \c <b>Tracing configuration options can be found in Section \ref tracing_tracing_options</b>.
1124 - \c storage/model: \ref options_storage_model
1125 - \c path: \ref options_generic_path
1126 - \c plugin: \ref options_generic_plugin
1127 - \c verbose-exit: \ref options_generic_exit
1129 - \c vm_workstation/model: \ref options_vm_workstation_model
1130 - \c workstation/model: \ref options_model_select
1132 \subsection options_index_smpi_coll Index of SMPI collective algorithms options
1134 TODO: All available collective algorithms will be made available via the ``smpirun --help-coll`` command.