Step-6: Advanced PFASST controllers¶
We discuss controller implementations, features and parallelization of PFASST controllers in this step.
Part A: The nonMPI controller¶
pySDC comes with (at least) two controllers: the standard, non-MPI controller we have used so far and the MPI_parallel one. The nonMPI controller can be used to run simulations without having to worry about parallelization and MPI installations. By monitoring the convergence, this controller can already give a detailed idea of how PFASST will work for a given problem.
Important things to note:
If you don’t want to deal with parallelization and/or are only interested in SDC, MLSDC or convergence of PFASST, use the nonMPI controller.
If you care for parallelization, use the MPI controller, see Part C.
Full code: pySDC/tutorial/step_6/A_run_non_MPI_controller.py
from pathlib import Path
from pySDC.helpers.stats_helper import get_sorted
from pySDC.implementations.controller_classes.controller_nonMPI import controller_nonMPI
from pySDC.implementations.problem_classes.HeatEquation_ND_FD import heatNd_unforced
from pySDC.implementations.sweeper_classes.generic_implicit import generic_implicit
from pySDC.implementations.transfer_classes.TransferMesh import mesh_to_mesh
def main(num_proc_list=None, fname=None, multi_level=True):
"""
A simple test program to run PFASST
Args:
num_proc_list: list of number of processes to test with
fname: filename/path for output
multi_level (bool): do multi-level run or single-level
"""
if multi_level:
description, controller_params, t0, Tend = set_parameters_ml()
else:
assert all(num_proc == 1 for num_proc in num_proc_list), (
'ERROR: single-level run can only use 1 processor, got %s' % num_proc_list
)
description, controller_params, t0, Tend = set_parameters_sl()
Path("data").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
f = open('data/' + fname, 'w')
# loop over different numbers of processes
for num_proc in num_proc_list:
out = 'Working with %2i processes...' % num_proc
f.write(out + '\n')
print(out)
# instantiate controllers
controller = controller_nonMPI(num_procs=num_proc, controller_params=controller_params, description=description)
# get initial values on finest level
P = controller.MS[0].levels[0].prob
uinit = P.u_exact(t0)
# call main functions to get things done...
uend, stats = controller.run(u0=uinit, t0=t0, Tend=Tend)
# compute exact solution and compare with both results
uex = P.u_exact(Tend)
err = abs(uex - uend)
out = 'Error vs. exact solution: %12.8e' % err
f.write(out + '\n')
print(out)
# filter statistics by type (number of iterations)
iter_counts = get_sorted(stats, type='niter', sortby='time')
# compute and print statistics
for item in iter_counts:
out = 'Number of iterations for time %4.2f: %1i ' % (item[0], item[1])
f.write(out + '\n')
print(out)
f.write('\n')
print()
assert all(item[1] <= 8 for item in iter_counts), "ERROR: weird iteration counts, got %s" % iter_counts
f.close()
def set_parameters_ml():
"""
Helper routine to set parameters for the following multi-level runs
Returns:
dict: dictionary containing the simulation parameters
dict: dictionary containing the controller parameters
float: starting time
float: end time
"""
# initialize level parameters
level_params = {}
level_params['restol'] = 5e-10
level_params['dt'] = 0.125
# initialize sweeper parameters
sweeper_params = {}
sweeper_params['quad_type'] = 'RADAU-RIGHT'
sweeper_params['num_nodes'] = [3]
sweeper_params['QI'] = 'LU'
# initialize problem parameters
problem_params = {}
problem_params['nu'] = 0.1 # diffusion coefficient
problem_params['freq'] = 2 # frequency for the test value
problem_params['nvars'] = [63, 31] # number of degrees of freedom for each level
problem_params['bc'] = 'dirichlet-zero' # boundary conditions
# initialize step parameters
step_params = {}
step_params['maxiter'] = 50
step_params['errtol'] = 1e-05
# initialize space transfer parameters
space_transfer_params = {}
space_transfer_params['rorder'] = 2
space_transfer_params['iorder'] = 6
# initialize controller parameters
controller_params = {}
controller_params['logger_level'] = 30
controller_params['all_to_done'] = True # can ask the controller to keep iterating all steps until the end
controller_params['predict_type'] = 'pfasst_burnin' # activate iteration estimator
# fill description dictionary for easy step instantiation
description = {}
description['problem_class'] = heatNd_unforced
description['problem_params'] = problem_params
description['sweeper_class'] = generic_implicit
description['sweeper_params'] = sweeper_params
description['level_params'] = level_params
description['step_params'] = step_params
description['space_transfer_class'] = mesh_to_mesh
description['space_transfer_params'] = space_transfer_params
# set time parameters
t0 = 0.0
Tend = 1.0
return description, controller_params, t0, Tend
def set_parameters_sl():
"""
Helper routine to set parameters for the following multi-level runs
Returns:
dict: dictionary containing the simulation parameters
dict: dictionary containing the controller parameters
float: starting time
float: end time
"""
# initialize level parameters
level_params = {}
level_params['restol'] = 5e-10
level_params['dt'] = 0.125
# initialize sweeper parameters
sweeper_params = {}
sweeper_params['quad_type'] = 'RADAU-RIGHT'
sweeper_params['num_nodes'] = 3
sweeper_params['QI'] = 'LU'
# initialize problem parameters
problem_params = {}
problem_params['nu'] = 0.1 # diffusion coefficient
problem_params['freq'] = 2 # frequency for the test value
problem_params['nvars'] = 63 # number of degrees of freedom for each level
problem_params['bc'] = 'dirichlet-zero' # boundary conditions
# initialize step parameters
step_params = {}
step_params['maxiter'] = 50
# initialize controller parameters
controller_params = {}
controller_params['logger_level'] = 30
# fill description dictionary for easy step instantiation
description = {}
description['problem_class'] = heatNd_unforced
description['problem_params'] = problem_params
description['sweeper_class'] = generic_implicit
description['sweeper_params'] = sweeper_params
description['level_params'] = level_params
description['step_params'] = step_params
# set time parameters
t0 = 0.0
Tend = 1.0
return description, controller_params, t0, Tend
if __name__ == "__main__":
main(num_proc_list=[1], fname='step_6_A_sl_out.txt', multi_level=False)
main(num_proc_list=[1, 2, 4, 8], fname='step_6_A_ml_out.txt', multi_level=True)
Results:
Working with 1 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87627033e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 8
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 8
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 8
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 8
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 7
Working with 1 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87300679e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 3
Working with 2 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87272106e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 4
Working with 4 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87294206e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 5
Working with 8 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87290945e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 7
Part B: Odd temporal distribution¶
Accidentally, the numbers of parallel processes used in Part A are always dividers of the number of steps. Yet, this does not need to be the case. All controllers are capable of handling odd distributions, e.g. too few or too many processes for the steps (or for the las block). This is demonstrated here, where the code from Part A is called again with odd number of parallel steps.
Important things to note:
This capability may become useful if adaptive time-stepping is used. The controllers check for currently active steps and only those will compute the next block.
This also works for/with SDC and MLSDC, where in the case of varying time-step sizes the overall number of steps is not given at the beginning.
Full code: pySDC/tutorial/step_6/B_odd_temporal_distribution.py
from pySDC.tutorial.step_6.A_run_non_MPI_controller import main as main_A
def main():
"""
A simple test program to do check PFASST for odd numbers of processes
"""
main_A(num_proc_list=[3, 5, 7, 9], fname='step_6_B_out.txt', multi_level=True)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Results:
Working with 3 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87358935e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 4
Working with 5 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87358097e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 4
Working with 7 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87271747e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 3
Working with 9 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87290945e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 7
Part C: MPI parallelization¶
Since PFASST is actually a parallel algorithm, executing it in parallel e.g. using MPI might be an interesting exercise.
To do this, pySDC comes with the MPI-parallelized controller, namely controller_MPI.
It is supposed to yield the same results as the non-MPI counterpart and this is what we are demonstrating here (at least for one particular example).
The code is the same as in Parts A and B – it imports set_parameters from Part A so that all runs use the same parameters – with controller_MPI in place of the non-MPI controller.
Run it as you would run any MPI program, with one rank per parallel step:
mpirun -np 4 python C_MPI_parallelization.py
The number of parallel steps is simply the size of MPI.COMM_WORLD, so there is nothing to configure: run it on 4 ranks for 4 parallel steps, on 3 for 3, and so on.
We can use the results of Parts A and B to compare with and we expect the same number of iterations, the same accuracy and the same difference between the two flavors as in Part A (up to machine precision).
Important things to note:
This example also shows how the statistics of multiple MPI processes can be gathered and processed by rank 0.
The controller needs a working installation of
mpi4py. Since this is not always easy to achieve and since debugging a parallel program can cause a lot of headaches, the non-MPI controller performs the same operations in serial.The test that covers this part runs the same file on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 ranks through mpi-pytest, which is also how the rest of pySDC’s MPI tests are run.
Full code: pySDC/tutorial/step_6/C_MPI_parallelization.py
import sys
from pathlib import Path
from mpi4py import MPI
from pySDC.helpers.stats_helper import get_sorted
from pySDC.implementations.controller_classes.controller_MPI import controller_MPI
from pySDC.tutorial.step_6.A_run_non_MPI_controller import set_parameters_ml
def main(fname='step_6_C_out.txt'):
"""
Run PFASST with the MPI-parallel controller, one step per rank.
Run it the way you would run any MPI program, with as many ranks as you want steps::
mpirun -np 4 python C_MPI_parallelization.py
The number of parallel steps is simply the size of ``MPI.COMM_WORLD``, so nothing in here has to
be told how many there are.
Args:
fname (str): file under ``data/`` to append the results to
"""
# set MPI communicator
comm = MPI.COMM_WORLD
# get parameters from Part A
description, controller_params, t0, Tend = set_parameters_ml()
# instantiate controllers
controller = controller_MPI(controller_params=controller_params, description=description, comm=comm)
# get initial values on finest level
P = controller.S.levels[0].prob
uinit = P.u_exact(t0)
# call main functions to get things done...
uend, stats = controller.run(u0=uinit, t0=t0, Tend=Tend)
# filter statistics by type (number of iterations)
iter_counts = get_sorted(stats, type='niter', sortby='time')
# combine statistics into list of statistics
iter_counts_list = comm.gather(iter_counts, root=0)
rank = comm.Get_rank()
size = comm.Get_size()
if rank == 0:
Path("data").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
f = open('data/' + fname, 'a')
out = 'Working with %2i processes...' % size
f.write(out + '\n')
print(out)
# compute exact solutions and compare with both results
uex = P.u_exact(Tend)
err = abs(uex - uend)
out = 'Error vs. exact solution: %12.8e' % err
f.write(out + '\n')
print(out)
# build one list of statistics instead of list of lists, the sort by time
iter_counts_gather = [item for sublist in iter_counts_list for item in sublist]
iter_counts = sorted(iter_counts_gather, key=lambda tup: tup[0])
# compute and print statistics
for item in iter_counts:
out = 'Number of iterations for time %4.2f: %1i ' % (item[0], item[1])
f.write(out + '\n')
print(out)
f.write('\n')
print()
assert all(item[1] <= 8 for item in iter_counts), "ERROR: weird iteration counts, got %s" % iter_counts
if __name__ == "__main__":
main(sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) == 2 else 'step_6_C_out.txt')
Results:
Working with 1 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87300679e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 3
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 3
Working with 2 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87272106e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 4
Working with 4 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87294206e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 5
Working with 8 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87290945e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 7
Working with 3 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87358935e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 5
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 4
Working with 5 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87358097e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 6
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 4
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 4
Working with 7 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87271747e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 3
Working with 9 processes...
Error vs. exact solution: 2.87290945e-07
Number of iterations for time 0.00: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.12: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.25: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.38: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.50: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.62: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.75: 7
Number of iterations for time 0.88: 7