Running IBM Parallel Environment Applications

Introduction

The IBM Parallel Environment (PE) Eclipse plug-in, part of the Parallel Tools Platform (PTP), allows you to run a parallel application using IBM Parallel Environment from within the PTP framework. In addition to running applications, you can monitor their status, control their execution, and view their stdio output from within PTP. You can also debug a parallel application using the built in PTP parallel debugger.

You can run and debug parallel applications either as local projects or as remote projects, using the remote development environment support that is part of PTP.

Optionally, you can use IBM Tivoli WorkloadScheduler LoadLeveler to manage your application's access to system resources

This plugin consists of two parts. The first is the Eclipse PTP plugin code which is responsible for the PTP views presented to the user and the user's interaction with those views. The second part is a resource manager (proxy), which is responsible for communicating with the PTP PE plugin code, invoking the parallel application, and reporting application status to the PTP PE plugin.

Note: PTP 6.0 does not require the creation of separate Resource Managers and instead, the target configuration is specified on the Run Configuration dialog. This document describes the legacy (proxy-based) Resource Managers supported in versions of PTP prior to PTP 6.0. Target System Configurations replace Resource Managers in PTP 6.0 and beyond.

Requirements

In addition to having Eclipse and PTP installed, you need to have the following software packages installed.

You should review the following information about Parallel Environment installation and usage

If you are using LoadLeveler to manage your application's access to system resources, then you should review the following LoadLeveler documentation

Installation

If you will be running applications using PE with a host list and not using LoadLeveler to manage resource allocation, then installation is complete once you complete the PTP plugin installation procedures. If you plan to use LoadLeveler to manage resource allocation, then you will need to rebuild the Parallel Environment proxy by following these steps
  1. Make sure you have installed LoadLeveler and that the llapi.h include file exists on your system. It normally is located in the ./full/include directory within a LoadLeveler installation. LoadLeveler is normally installed in /usr/lpp/LoadL on AIX systems and in /opt/ibmll/LoadL on Linux systems. LoadLeveler may also be installed in a private directory if you choose to do so.
  2. cd to the org.eclipse.ptp.ibmpe.proxy directory inside your plugins directory.
  3. Invoke the configure script in that directory with the --with-ll-header flag, specifying the path to the directory containing llapi.h. (Use configure --help to see a complete list of configure script options)
  4. Invoke make in the same directory.

Getting Started

Define an appropriate project, either a C/C++ project using CDT, or a Fortran project using Photran. You can define either a standard make project or a managed make project.

When you define the project, you should specify the project location as a directory which is shared among all nodes where the parallel application will run to ensure Parallel Environment has access to the executable on all nodes. The following image shows how a project can be created using a directory visible to all nodes.

You should use the following compiler invocation commands to invoke the compiler, either in your makefile, or when specifying the compiler and linker in a managed make project.

The following image shows how the compiler is specified for a managed make project. The correct linker should also be specified by clicking the settings for the linker.

Once you have created your project, you should switch to the PTP runtime perspective, and set up the default preferences for Parallel Environment and specify the required resource manager. This setup needs to only be done once.

You specify the default preferences by opening the preferences dialog, opening the PTP node, opening the Resource Managers node, and then clicking the Parallel Environment entry. The PE preferences panel is displayed. Here, you specify the default settings for a resource manager to be used for Parallel Environment.

The settings that can be specified here are: