Ranges

In HPJava ranges are represented by objects of class Range. The most common way to create one is to use the constructor for one of the subclasses representing ranges with specific distribution formats. A class hierarchy of ranges is given below:

The simple block distribution format implemented by BlockRange was used directly in the matrix multiplication example. The standard constructor for BlockRange has interface

  public BlockRange(int N, Dimension d) {...}

The Range subclass CyclicRange deals with another distribution format from High Performance Fortran. The interval is mapped to the process dimension in wraparound mode, as in this example involving three processes:

The standard constructor for CyclicRange has interface

  public CyclicRange(int N, Dimension d) {...}

Earlier we discussed arrays with sequential dimensions (for example the arrays a and b in the original form of the matrix multiplication). Not too surprisingly sequential dimensions also have range objects associated with them. These are members of the subclass CollapsedRange, which describe sequential, undistributed dimensions of HPJava arrays. Constructors for CollapsedRange objects are usually not called explicitly (although they can be). Instead a CollapsedRange object is created implicitly every time an array with a sequential dimension is created.

The Range subclass ExtBlockRange is closely related to BlockRange. An instance of ExtBlockRange has an identical set of locations to a corresponding BlockRange object. The difference is that when an array is created with a dimension of type ExtBlockRange, extra space is allocated round the edges of the locally held segment of the array. These ghost extensions can be used to cache local copies of elements held on neighboring processes. This is very useful for certain patterns of update involving a local stencil. We give a complete example on the next slide. Here is a simplified example:

The elements shown in yellow represent locally cached copies of elements properly belonging to adjacent processes (for the sake of definiteness we assumed wraparound at the edges of the grid, but the exact interpretation of the extra elements is entirely up to the program that initializes them.) The standard constructors for ExtBlockRange are:

  public ExtBlockRange(int N, Dimension d) {...}
  public ExtBlockRange(int N, Dimension d, int w) {...}
  public ExtBlockRange(int N, Dimension d, int w_lo, int w_hi) {...}

The first constructor adds extensions of width 1 to the low and high end of the local segments (as above). The second adds extensions of width w to both ends. The third allows extensions with different widths at the two ends.

IrregRange is another generalization of BlockRange where the lengths of the segments associated with each process along a dimension can be specified independently by an array of lengths passed to the constructor of the range.

Finally, any dimension of a process grid is represented as an object of class Dimension, and Dimension itself is a subclass of Range - namely a range with a single location in each process. This means that it is possible to declare an array with a single element in every process along the dimension. This is most useful in multidimensional arrays, and is especially common in multidimensional arrays where some other dimensions are sequential. For example if we created an array by

  Dimension x = p.dim(0) ;
  float [[-,*]] a = new [[x, 5]] ;

Note the interesting similarities and subtle differences between an array created in this way and a one-dimensional array distributed blockwise. HPJava is quite flexible and often allows several ways to represent essentially similar data distributions. As above, instances of the Dimension class are usually obtained from a Procs object through the inquiry dim(), rather than through a constructor.

Next: Another Example - the Laplace Equation