int MPI_Free_mem(
  void *base
);

Parameters

base

[in] initial address of memory segment allocated by MPI_ALLOC_MEM (choice)

Remarks

In some systems, message-passing and remote-memory-access ( RMA) operations run faster when accessing specially allocated memory (e.g., memory that is shared by the other processes in the communicating group on an SMP). MPI provides a mechanism for allocating and freeing such special memory. The use of such memory for message passing or RMA is not mandatory, and this memory can be used without restrictions as any other dynamically allocated memory. However, implementations may restrict the use of the MPI_WIN_LOCK and MPI_WIN_UNLOCK functions to windows allocated in such memory.

The function MPI_FREE_MEM may return an error code of class MPI_ERR_BASE to indicate an invalid base argument.

Rationale.

The C and C++ bindings of MPI_ALLOC_MEM and MPI_FREE_MEM are similar to the bindings for the malloc and free C library calls: a call to MPI_Alloc_mem(..., &base) should be paired with a call to MPI_Free_mem(base) (one less level of indirection). Both arguments are declared to be of same type void* so as to facilitate type casting. The Fortran binding is consistent with the C and C++ bindings: the Fortran MPI_ALLOC_MEM call returns in baseptr the (integer valued) address of the allocated memory. The base argument of MPI_FREE_MEM is a choice argument, which passes (a reference to) the variable stored at that location.

Thread and Interrupt Safety

This routine is thread-safe. This means that this routine may be safely used by multiple threads without the need for any user-provided thread locks. However, the routine is not interrupt safe. Typically, this is due to the use of memory allocation routines such as malloc or other non-MPICH runtime routines that are themselves not interrupt-safe.

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.

Example Code

The following sample code illustrates MPI_Free_mem.

#include "mpi.h"
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int *ptr;

    MPI_Init(&argc, &argv);
    MPI_Alloc_mem(100*sizeof(int), MPI_INFO_NULL, &ptr);
    MPI_Free_mem(ptr);
    MPI_Finalize();
    return 0;
}