[mvapich-discuss] Building mvapich-based applications without access to infiniband system

[Jeff Squyres]

Ben --

You might want to install the OFED stack, which comes with Open MPI,  
MVAPICH 1, and MVAPICH 2 pre-installed (all with IB support  
included).  Cisco offers pre-made RPMs of these ins OFED distribution  
off cisco.com -- I believe that other vendors do as well, but I don't  
know the details.  The pre-made binary RPMs avoids the problem of the  
build system trying to detect specific hardware when you have none.   
After installation, you can use the mpi-selector-menu command to  
select which MPI to use in OFED (see the man page for details).

However, you're still in a bit of an odd spot in that you want to ship  
a product but don't have the hardware to test it on.  Even if you get  
it to compile/link, you don't have a way to test whether it actually  
works or not. That's a real bummer (and could be a support  
nightmare).  :-(

FWIW, if budgets are tight, you could buy a pair of IB HCAs and  
connect them back-to-back without a switch for pretty cheap.  This is  
nowhere near real testing, but at least it would give you some  
indication of whether your app works over an IB-enabled MPI or not.


On Jan 3, 2008, at 12:56 PM, Ben Held wrote:

> Our company offers a commercial product that we currently build for  
> standard MPICH-1 and LAM.  We have a client that has a new  
> Infiniband Linux cluster that has MVAPICH installed on it.  Our  
> company does not own any infiniband hardware, but we are faced with  
> providing an application for this customer’s cluster.  Is this  
> possible and how do we proceed.  It appears that the build process  
> for mvapich automatically detects the hardware (that we don’t have),  
> so I have concerns that building mvapich here and the linking it  
> into our app will result in a binary that will not run on their  
> cluster.
>
> Thanks,
> Ben
>
> Ben Held
> Simulation Technology & Applied Research, Inc.
> 11520 N. Port Washington Rd., Suite 201
> Mequon, WI 53092
> P: 1.262.240.0291 x101
> F: 1.262.240.0294
> E: ben.held at staarinc.com
> http://www.staarinc.com
>
>
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-- 
Jeff Squyres
Cisco Systems