Re: [Boost-users] [mpi] broadcast performance

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [mpi] broadcast performance
From: Júlio Hoffimann (julio.hoffimann_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-09-06 13:49:36

Hi Brian,

I don't remember the details, but what you said is completely right, when
we pass an object to any of the Boost.MPI methods, it can be either of MPI
type, in what case it's properly forwarded to the C implementation, or it
can be of a serializable type when the magic happens.

At the other end of the wire, Boost.MPI will magically deserialize the
object and you have no additional work. You keep working on high-level C++.

The main bottleneck here is the act of serialize/deserialize repeatedly. As
you already know, Boost.MPI solved this problem for some cases (with fixed
layout): the skeleton and content approach.

When the approach is not applicable, you have to live with C raw buffers
doing the &vec[0] trick. I'll take a better look to see if specializing the
template with that trick is safe and covered by the C++ standard.

You're also free to investigate and produce patches. :-)

Regards,
Júlio.