OpenMP has been focused in performance applied to numerical applications, but when we try to move this focus to other kind of applications, like Web servers, we detect one important lack. In these applications, performance is important, but reliability is even more important, and OpenMP does not have any recovery mechanism. In this paper we present a novel proposal to address this lack. In order to add error handling to OpenMP we propose some extensions to the current OpenMP specification. A directive and a clause are proposed, defining a scope for the error handling (where the error can occur) and specifying a behaviour for handling the specific errors. Some examples of use are presented, and we present also an evaluation showing the impact of this proposal in OpenMP applications. We show that this impact is low enough to consider the proposal worthwhile for OpenMP.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
J. Balart, A. Duran, M. Gonzàlez, E. Ayguadé X. Martorell, and J. Labarta, Experiences parallelizing a Web Server with OpenMP. In First International Workshop on OpenMP (May 2005).
P. Isensee, Game Programming Gems, Vol. 6, chapter Utilizing Multicore Processors with OpenMP. Charles River Media (2006).
K. S. Gatlin, OpenMP 3.0 feature: Error detection capability. Panel at First International Workshop on OpenMP (2005 May). http://www.nic.uoregon.edu/ iwomp2005/Talks/gatlin-panel.pdf.
Y. Huang, P. E. Chung, C. Kintala, D. Liang, and C. Wang, NT-SwiFT: Software-implemented Fault Tolerance for Windows-NT. In Proceedings of the 1998 USENIX WindowsNT Symposium (1998).
D. M. Beazley, An Embedded Error Recovery and Debugging Mechanism for Scripting Language Extensions. In Proceedings of the USENIX 2001 Annual Technical Conference (June 2001).
C. Donelly and R. Stallman, The Bison Manual: Using the YACC-Compatible Parser Generator. Gnu Press (2004).
D. H. H. Ingalls, Design principles behind smalltalk. BYTE Magazine (August 1981).
G. L. Steele, Common Lisp: The Language, 2nd edn. Digital Press (1990).
M. Elnozahy, L. Alvisi, Y. M. Wang, and D. B. Johnson, A survey of rollback-recovery protocols in message passing systems. Technical report School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University (October 1996).
J. S. Plank, M. Beck, G. Kingsley, et al., Libckpt: Transparent Checkpointing Under Unix. University of Tennessee, Computer Science Department (1994).
W. Dieter and Jr. J. Lumpp, A user-level checkpointing library for POSIX threads programs. In Proceedings of 1999 Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing Systems (FTCS) (June 1999).
G. Bronevetsky, D. Marques, K. Pingali, and P. Stodghill, Automated Application-Level Checkpointing of MPI Programs. In Proceedings of Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), pp. 84–94 (June 2003).
Nanos project http://www.cepba.upc.edu/nanos/.
J. Balart, A. Duran, M. Gonzàlez, X. Martorell, E. Ayguadé, and J. Labarta, Nanos Mercurium: A Research Compiler for OpenMP. In Proceedings of the European Workshop on OpenMP 2004 (October 2004).
J. M. Bull, Measuring Synchronization and Scheduling Overheads in OpenMP. In First European Workshop on OpenMP (September 1999).
D. H. Bailey, E. Barszcz, J. T. Barton, D. S. Browning, R. L. Carter, D. Dagum, R. A. Fatoohi, P. O. Frederickson, T. A. Lasinski, R. S. Schreiber, H. D. Simon, V. Venkatakrishnan, and S. K. Weeratunga, The NAS Parallel Benchmarks, The International Journal of Supercomputer Applications, 5(3):63–73 (Fall 1991).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Duran, A., Ferrer, R., Costa, J.J. et al. A Proposal for Error Handling in OpenMP. Int J Parallel Prog 35, 393–416 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-007-0049-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-007-0049-y