int MPI_Op_create(
  MPI_User_function *function,
  int commute,
  MPI_Op *op
);

Parameters

function

[in] user defined function (function)

commute

[in] true if commutative; false otherwise. (logical)

op

[out] operation (handle)

Remarks

MPI_OP_CREATE binds a user-defined global operation to an op handle that can subsequently be used in MPI_REDUCE, MPI_ALLREDUCE, MPI_REDUCE_SCATTER, and MPI_SCAN. The user-defined operation is assumed to be associative. If commute = true, then the operation should be both commutative and associative. If commute = false, then the order of operands is fixed and is defined to be in ascending, process rank order, beginning with process zero. The order of evaluation can be changed, talking advantage of the associativity of the operation. If commute = true then the order of evaluation can be changed, taking advantage of commutativity and associativity.

function is the user-defined function, which must have the following four arguments: invec, inoutvec, len and datatype.

The ANSI-C prototype for the function is the following.
 

typedef void MPI_User_function( void *invec, void *inoutvec, int *len, 
                                                MPI_Datatype *datatype); 

FUNCTION USER_FUNCTION( INVEC(*), INOUTVEC(*), LEN, TYPE) 
<type> INVEC(LEN), INOUTVEC(LEN) 
 INTEGER LEN, TYPE 

Informally, we can think of invec and inoutvec as arrays of len elements that function is combining. The result of the reduction over-writes values in inoutvec, hence the name. Each invocation of the function results in the pointwise evaluation of the reduce operator on len elements: I.e, the function returns in inoutvec[i] the value , for , where is the combining operation computed by the function.

[] Rationale.

The len argument allows MPI_REDUCE to avoid calling the function for each element in the input buffer. Rather, the system can choose to apply the function to chunks of input. In C, it is passed in as a reference for reasons of compatibility with Fortran.

By internally comparing the value of the datatype argument to known, global handles, it is possible to overload the use of a single user-defined function for several, different data types. ( End of rationale.)
General datatypes may be passed to the user function. However, use of datatypes that are not contiguous is likely to lead to inefficiencies.

No MPI communication function may be called inside the user function. MPI_ABORT may be called inside the function in case of an error.

Advice to users.

Suppose one defines a library of user-defined reduce functions that are overloaded: the datatype argument is used to select the right execution path at each invocation, according to the types of the operands. The user-defined reduce function cannot "decode" the datatype argument that it is passed, and cannot identify, by itself, the correspondence between the datatype handles and the datatype they represent. This correspondence was established when the datatypes were created. Before the library is used, a library initialization preamble must be executed. This preamble code will define the datatypes that are used by the library, and store handles to these datatypes in global, static variables that are shared by the user code and the library code.

The Fortran version of MPI_REDUCE will invoke a user-defined reduce function using the Fortran calling conventions and will pass a Fortran-type datatype argument; the C version will use C calling convention and the C representation of a datatype handle. Users who plan to mix languages should define their reduction functions accordingly.

Notes on the user function

 typedef void (MPI_User_function) ( void * a, void * b, int * len, MPI_Datatype * ); 

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.

Notes on collective operations

The reduction functions (MPI_Op) do not return an error value. As a result, if the functions detect an error, all they can do is either call MPI_Abort or silently skip the problem. Thus, if you change the error handler from MPI_ERRORS_ARE_FATAL to something else, for example, MPI_ERRORS_RETURN, then no error may be indicated.

The reason for this is the performance problems in ensuring that all collective routines return the same error value.

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.

See Also

Example Code

The following sample code illustrates MPI_Op_create.