Compile OpenSees, OpenSeesSP, OpenSeesMP on Ubuntu 12.04

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KenLuu
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2012 10:48 am
Location: University of Houston

Compile OpenSees, OpenSeesSP, OpenSeesMP on Ubuntu 12.04

Post by KenLuu »

Hi everyone,

I'm doing research about nonlinear analysis of concrete structure. Because my model is very large so it took very long time to get results.
I know OpenSees is also developed to run in parallel computer so I'm trying to go this way in order to improve the speed of running my model.
I'm currently learning Ubuntu 12.04, trying to recompile the program. I followed the instruction of the author and already compiled OpenSees.exe successfully.
But OpenSeesSP or OpenSeesMP could not be done.

I'm sorry for opening a new topic about this problem. I knew this problem is not new and many people already had question about this.
However, I've two weeks to read comments regarding this problem in the forum but it seems there is no clear instruction.

I open this topic again hoping that someone who already build the parallel program successfully on Ubuntu 12.04 please summary the up-to-date procedure of how to build it.
Thank you very much!
fmk
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Location: UC Berkeley
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Re: Compile OpenSees, OpenSeesSP, OpenSeesMP on Ubuntu 12.04

Post by fmk »

i suggest you use the prebuilt versions of OpenSees on one of the resources made available through NEES or get an account on Stampede (being as you are in the US you can get 50k hours on the Stampede cluster by requesting a startup allocation from xsede . The parallel applications are a pain to build especially for engineers with little experience building and compiling applications on linux machines.

if you must build it on your machine you need some version of mpi installed. then try building MP using one of the parallel Makefiles BUT say no to mumps and petsc. if you get through that then you can try and install mumps. you need mumps and the parallel scalapack and parallel blas and possibly one other package.

if you want an account on XESEDE:
the quickest and surest way to get an allocation is to request a startup allocation.
https://www.xsede.org/allocations#types-startup

when writing the proposal here are the mentioned 'appropriate uses of a startup'

Application development by principal investigators
Experimentation on XSEDE platforms
Use of XSEDE systems for classroom instruction
Developing a science gateway

you would probably want to make the proposal fall under item 2: basically you want to
test usefulless of XSEDE resources for performing your research which will involve many large scale simulations: test using a couple hundred simulation, each using 16 to 32 processors, 10 or so hours a run before you write a full proposal. (some figures to justify the 50k hours) you are choosing Stampede because the OpenSeess application you intend to use is available for that machine.

attached are 2 example successful proposals they provide. As you see it is basically a paragraph or 2.

you need to specify the resources you want: 50,000 hours on Stampede

here is the documentation on the proposal writing
https://www.xsede.org/allocations#writi ... peducation
KenLuu
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue May 15, 2012 10:48 am
Location: University of Houston

Re: Compile OpenSees, OpenSeesSP, OpenSeesMP on Ubuntu 12.04

Post by KenLuu »

Dear Frank,

Thanks a lot for your reply. It is really a tricky problem. I did try to build parallel without any success. However, since I realize that running OpenSees in Linux, the speed increase about 4 or 5 times. In addition to that I bought a new computer with double speed of processor. The total speed is about 10 times faster compared to running the program in window with my old computer. I feel good with that now. But I still keep learning about parrallel computing.

I have one more question not about parallel but relating to OpenSees in Linux. I used the same file to compile OpenSees in both Windows(7) and Linux(Ubuntu 12.04). Then I used the executive file I got to run the same model in each system. However, the results I got from each running are a little different. In my opinion, since we compile from the same file, the results should be completely identical. Am I right or wrong?
fmk
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Re: Compile OpenSees, OpenSeesSP, OpenSeesMP on Ubuntu 12.04

Post by fmk »

no results will not be exactly the same unless you are lucky! .. the reasons are due to:
1) computers work in finite precision arithmetic and roundoff will effect the results.
2) different compilers will generate different sets of instructions that the processor executes when running the execute, e.g. a statement in the code: a = b+c-d could be executed a=(b+c)-d or a = b+(c-d) and while mathematically they are the same, in finite precision math they are not and depending on the magnitudes of b,c,and d the results can be very different due to roundoff.

have a look at the following:
http://wiki.scinethpc.ca/wiki/images/f/ ... stency.pdf
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