int MPI_Comm_spawn_multiple(
  int count,
  char *array_of_commands[],
  char* *array_of_argv[],
  int array_of_maxprocs[],
  MPI_Info array_of_info[],
  int root,
  MPI_Comm comm,
  MPI_Comm *intercomm,
  int array_of_errcodes[]
);

int MPI_Comm_spawn_multiple(
  int count,
  wchar_t *array_of_commands[],
  wchar_t* *array_of_argv[],
  int array_of_maxprocs[],
  MPI_Info array_of_info[],
  int root,
  MPI_Comm comm,
  MPI_Comm *intercomm,
  int array_of_errcodes[]
);

Parameters

count

[in] number of commands (positive integer, significant to MPI only at root

array_of_commands

[in] programs to be executed (array of strings, significant only at root)

array_of_argv

[in] arguments for commands (array of array of strings, significant only at root)

array_of_maxprocs

[in] maximum number of processes to start for each command (array of integer, significant only at root)

array_of_info

[in] info objects telling the runtime system where and how to start processes (array of handles, significant only at root)

root

[in] rank of process in which previous arguments are examined (integer)

comm

[in] intracommunicator containing group of spawning processes (handle)

intercomm

[out] intercommunicator between original group and newly spawned group (handle)

array_of_errcodes

[out] one error code per process (array of integer)

Info argument

DeinoMPI uses the info argument to specify additional control parameters to each spawn command.  Here are the supported keys:

• path - search path to locate the executable. Use semicolons (;) to separate paths.  Example: c:\temp;c:\bin
• host - host name to launch the processes on.  All count[i] processes will be launched on this host.
• wdir - working directory
• env - list of environment variables in the form: env=var env2=var2 ...  Variables with spaces or = characters in them should be quoted.  The quote and escape characters need to be escaped within quoted strings.  For example: name="John Doe" random="He said, \"put it in c:\\temp\""
• hosts - list of hosts where to deposit count[i] processes.  The form is: hostA[:n] hostB[:m] where :n is an optional way to deposit more than one process per host.  Example: hostA hostB:2 hostC.  If count = 5 the processes will be deposited as follows: hostA hostB hostB hostC hostA
• machinefile - file to be read to create a host list.  The format of the file is one host per line with blank lines and lines beginning with # ignored.  Multiple processes per host can be specified by specifying the host name as follows: hostA:n.  Hosts are selected round robin from the list until count[i] number of processes are launched.
• map - list of network drives to map before launching the processes.  The format is: drive:\\share;drive2:\\share2.  Example: z:\\myserver\home\userA;y:\\myserver\data
• localonly - launch the count[i] processes only on the host that performs the spawn.  This is the host that executes mpiexec, not the host of the root process that called spawn.
• priority - set the priority of the launched count[i] processes.  Format: priority class[:thread priority].  You can specify the process priority and optionally the thread priority.  The classes are: 0,1,2,3,4 (idle, below, normal, above, high).  The thread priorities are: 0,1,2,3,4,5 (idle, lowest, below, normal, above, highest).  The default is 2:3
• exitcodes - print the exit codes of the spawned processes when the group exits.  Currently this causes all processes from the spawn command to print their exit codes, not just the count[i] processes associated with the info argument.
• log - shortcut to enable MPE logging of the spawned group.  If this key is specified in any info argument it must be specified in all of them since it is not permitted to log a subset of processes of MPI_COMM_WORLD.

Remarks

MPI_COMM_SPAWN_MULTIPLE is identical to MPI_COMM_SPAWN except that there are multiple executable specifications. The first argument, count, gives the number of specifications. Each of the next four arguments are simply arrays of the corresponding arguments in MPI_COMM_SPAWN. For the Fortran version of array_of_argv, the element array_of_argv(i,j) is the jth argument to command number i.
Rationale.

This may seem backwards to Fortran programmers who are familiar with Fortran's column-major ordering. However, it is necessary to do it this way to allow MPI_COMM_SPAWN to sort out arguments. Note that the leading dimension of array_of_argv must be the same as count. ( End of rationale.)

Advice to users.

The argument count is interpreted by MPI only at the root, as is array_of_argv. Since the leading dimension of array_of_argv is count, a non-positive value of count at a non-root node could theoretically cause a runtime bounds check error, even though array_of_argv should be ignored by the subroutine. If this happens, you should explicitly supply a reasonable value of count on the non-root nodes. ( End of advice to users.)
 

In any language, an application may use the constant MPI_ARGVS_NULL (which is likely to be (char ***)0 in C) to specify that no arguments should be passed to any commands. The effect of setting individual elements of array_of_argv to MPI_ARGV_NULL is not defined. To specify arguments for some commands but not others, the commands without arguments should have a corresponding argv whose first element is null ( (char *)0 in C and empty string in Fortran).

All of the spawned processes have the same MPI_COMM_WORLD. Their ranks in MPI_COMM_WORLD correspond directly to the order in which the commands are specified in MPI_COMM_SPAWN_MULTIPLE. Assume that m₁ processes are generated by the first command, m₂ by the second, etc. The processes corresponding to the first command have ranks 0, 1, ..., m₁-1. The processes in the second command have ranks m₁, m₁+1, ..., m₁+m₂-1. The processes in the third have ranks m₁+m₂, m₁+m₂+1, ..., m₁+m₂+m₃-1, etc.

Advice to users.

Calling MPI_COMM_SPAWN multiple times would create many sets of children with different MPI_COMM_WORLDs whereas MPI_COMM_SPAWN_MULTIPLE creates children with a single MPI_COMM_WORLD, so the two methods are not completely equivalent. There are also two performance-related reasons why, if you need to spawn multiple executables, you may want to use MPI_COMM_SPAWN_MULTIPLE instead of calling MPI_COMM_SPAWN several times. First, spawning several things at once may be faster than spawning them sequentially. Second, in some implementations, communication between processes spawned at the same time may be faster than communication between processes spawned separately. ( End of advice to users.)
The array_of_errcodes argument is 1-dimensional array of size , where n_i is the ith element of array_of_maxprocs. Command number i corresponds to the n_i contiguous slots in this array from element to . Error codes are treated as for MPI_COMM_SPAWN.

Examples of array_of_argv in C and Fortran

To run the program "ocean" with arguments "-gridfile" and "ocean1.grd" and the program "atmos" with argument "atmos.grd" in C:
 

       char *array_of_commands[2] = {"ocean", "atmos"}; 
       char **array_of_argv[2]; 
       char *argv0[] = {"-gridfile", "ocean1.grd", (char *)0}; 
       char *argv1[] = {"atmos.grd", (char *)0}; 
       array_of_argv[0] = argv0; 
       array_of_argv[1] = argv1; 
       MPI_Comm_spawn_multiple(2, array_of_commands, array_of_argv, ...); 

       CHARACTER*25 commands(2), array_of_argv(2, 3) 
       commands(1) = ' ocean ' 
       array_of_argv(1, 1) = ' -gridfile ' 
       array_of_argv(1, 2) = ' ocean1.grd' 
       array_of_argv(1, 3) = ' ' 
 
       commands(2) = ' atmos ' 
       array_of_argv(2, 1) = ' atmos.grd ' 
       array_of_argv(2, 2) = ' ' 
 
       call MPI_COMM_SPAWN_MULTIPLE(2, commands, array_of_argv, ...) 

Notes for Fortran

All MPI objects (e.g., MPI_Datatype, MPI_Comm) are of type INTEGER in Fortran.

Errors

All MPI routines (except MPI_Wtime and MPI_Wtick) return an error value; C routines as the value of the function and Fortran routines in the last argument. Before the value is returned, the current MPI error handler is called. By default, this error handler aborts the MPI job. The error handler may be changed with MPI_Comm_set_errhandler (for communicators), MPI_File_set_errhandler (for files), and MPI_Win_set_errhandler (for RMA windows). The MPI-1 routine MPI_Errhandler_set may be used but its use is deprecated. The predefined error handler MPI_ERRORS_RETURN may be used to cause error values to be returned. Note that MPI does not guarentee that an MPI program can continue past an error; however, MPI implementations will attempt to continue whenever possible.

MPI_SUCCESS

No error; MPI routine completed successfully.

MPI_ERR_COMM

Invalid communicator. A common error is to use a null communicator in a call (not even allowed in MPI_Comm_rank).

MPI_ERR_ARG

Invalid argument. Some argument is invalid and is not identified by a specific error class (e.g., MPI_ERR_RANK).

MPI_ERR_INFO

Invalid Info

Example Code

The following sample code illustrates MPI_Comm_spawn_multiple.