Setting up your system

In order to follow this workshop, you will need access to compilers and MPI libraries. You can either use a cluster or set things up on your local computer - the instructions here are for installing on your own computer.

We recommend that participants create an isolated software environment on their computer and install a C compiler along with MPI libraries inside that environment. Root-level system installation is also possible but will not be covered here due to the risk of various conflicts (or worse).

These instructions are based on installing compilers and MPI via the Conda package and enviroment manager, as it provides a convenient way to install binary packages in an isolated software environment.

Operating systems

The following steps are appropriate for Linux and MacOS systems. For Windows, it is necessary to first install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (see these installation instructions for WSL). Installing compilers and MPI natively on Windows is also possible through Cygwin and the Microsoft Distribution of MPICH, but we recommend WSL which is available for Windows 10 and later.

Installing conda

Begin by installing Miniconda:

  1. Download the 64-bit installer from here for your operating system:

    • for MacOS and Linux, choose the bash installer

    • on Windows, open a Linux-WSL terminal and type: wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh. If wget is not a recognised command, first install it by sudo apt-get install wget (provide the password you chose when installing WSL).

  2. In a terminal, run the installer with bash Miniconda3-latest-<operating-system>-x86_64.sh (replace with correct name of installer)

  3. Agree to the terms of conditions, specify the installation directory (the default is usually fine), and answer “yes” to the questions “Do you wish the installer to initialize Miniconda3 by running conda init?”

You now have miniconda and conda installed. Make sure that it works by typing which conda and see that it points to where you installed miniconda (you may have to open a new terminal first).

We recommend that you create an isolated conda environment (this is good practice in software development):

$ conda create --name mpi
$ conda activate mpi

This should create a new empty environment and activate it, which might prepend your shell prompt with the name of the conda environment.

Installing a C compiler and MPI

Now install compilers and the OpenMPI implementation of MPI:

(mpi) $ conda install -c conda-forge compilers
(mpi) $ conda install -c conda-forge openmpi

If you prefer MPICH over OpenMPI (or you experience problems with OpenMPI), you can instead do:

(mpi) $ conda install -c conda-forge compilers
(mpi) $ conda install -c conda-forge mpich

Please also verify the installation.

The following commands should give version numbers:

(mpi) $ mpicc --version
(mpi) $ mpirun --version

With OpenMPI you can also try the -showme flag to see what the mpicc compiler wrapper does under the hood:

(mpi) $ mpicc -showme

To compile an MPI code hello_mpi.c, you should now be able to do:

(mpi) $ mpicc -o hello_mpi.x hello_mpi.c
(mpi) $ mpirun -n 2 hello_mpi.x

To compile with OpenMP support for hybrid MPI+OpenMP codes, you need to add the -fopenmp flag:

(mpi) $ mpicc -fopenmp -o hello_omp_mpi.x hello_omp_mpi.c
(mpi) $ export OMP_NUM_THREADS=2
(mpi) $ mpirun -n 2 hello_omp_mpi.x

You might also need to explicitly link against the OpenMP runtime library.