Implementing Flexible Threading Support in Open MPI

Multithreaded MPI applications are gaining popularity in scientific and high-performance computing. While the combination of programming models is suited to support current parallel hardware, it moves threading models and their interaction with MPI into focus. With the advent of new threading libraries, the flexibility to select threading implementations of choice is becoming an important usability feature. Open MPI has traditionally avoided componentizing its threading model, relying on code inlining and static initialization to minimize potential impacts on runtime fast paths and synchronization. This paper describes the implementation of a generic threading runtime support in Open MPI using the Opal Modular Component Architecture. This architecture allows the programmer to select a threading library at compile- or run-time, providing both static initialization of threading primitives as well as dynamic instantiation of threading objects. In this work, we present the implementation, define required interfaces, and discuss trade-offs of dynamic and static initialization.