RowGatherer#

To compute \(y = A x\) where \(A\) is row-distributed, every rank must pull in the entries of \(x\) that its non-local matrix references but does not own (a halo gather). RowGatherer is the helper object that encapsulates this pattern. It sits on top of a collective communicator and reuses a precomputed index pattern across many apply calls so that the per-call cost is just the all-to-all itself. Internally it uses CollectiveCommunicator::create_inverse() to turn each rank’s receive pattern into the matching send pattern.

Most user code does not interact with the gatherer directly; the distributed Matrix constructs and uses it internally. gko::experimental::distributed::RowGatherer<L> is public for users implementing custom distributed LinOp operations that drive their own asynchronous halo exchanges: it packs the rows of a distributed Vector that other ranks need into a contiguous buffer, starts the all-to-all through its collective communicator, and writes the result into a destination vector.

What it does#

The mathematical operation is the row-selection map \(x_\text{halo} = R_\text{halo}\, x\), where \(R_\text{halo}\) is the indicator that picks out the global rows of \(x\) that this rank’s non-local matrix needs. In distributed terms each rank owns a block of \(x\), so satisfying \(x_\text{halo}\) requires other ranks to send their owned values to this rank, i.e. an all-to-all. RowGatherer is the object that owns the index list (“which local rows of my \(x\) do I need to send out, and to whom”) plus the send-side buffer.

Construction#

The recommended constructor takes an executor, a collective communicator, and an index_map:

namespace dist = gko::experimental::distributed;
namespace mpi  = gko::experimental::mpi;

// imap: the index_map of the receive pattern, built from the partition, this rank's id and the
// global indices it accesses but does not own:
//   dist::index_map<gko::int32, gko::int64> imap{exec, partition, comm.rank(), recv_connections};
// Build a collective communicator from it.
auto coll_comm = std::make_shared<mpi::NeighborhoodCommunicator>(comm, imap);

// Construct the row gatherer.
auto rg = dist::RowGatherer<gko::int32>::create(exec, coll_comm, imap);

Internally the constructor calls coll_comm->create_inverse() and runs a single i_all_to_all_v to derive the local send indices from the remote recv indices encoded in the index map. The send-index array is cached on the executor and reused for every subsequent exchange.

A simpler RowGatherer::create(exec, comm) constructor is available for cases where you only have a base communicator. It builds an empty default CollectiveCommunicator (a NeighborhoodCommunicator, or a DenseCommunicator when Ginkgo is configured against Open MPI older than 4.1) and is mainly useful as a default-constructed handle to be assigned into.

The asynchronous apply#

// b: the distributed input; x: the receive vector, one local row per gathered row.
auto x = dist::Vector<double>::create(
    exec, comm, gko::dim<2>{rg->get_size()[0], 1},
    gko::dim<2>{static_cast<gko::size_type>(coll_comm->get_recv_size()), 1});

auto req = rg->apply_async(b, x);
// ... do unrelated work that does not touch x ...
req.wait();
// x now holds the gathered rows.

apply_async returns an mpi::request. The receive vector x is a distributed Vector (the implementation writes its local part, even though the class documentation describes it as a matrix::Dense): its global row count is rg->get_size()[0] and each rank’s local row count is the communicator’s get_recv_size(). The receive vector must not be read or written between the call and req.wait(), and the sender’s local data inside b must not be modified either. Once wait() returns, the local part of x holds the rows of b that the collective communicator’s pattern said this rank needs.

Attention

The two-argument apply_async uses the gatherer’s internal send buffer, so only one mpi::request per RowGatherer instance can be active at a time. Calling it again while the previous request is still active throws a gko::InvalidStateError. To overlap multiple exchanges on the same gatherer, use the three-argument overload and pass a separate array<char> workspace per in-flight call.

The output executor must be compatible with the MPI implementation. If the MPI is not GPU-aware and the executor is a CudaExecutor / HipExecutor / DpcppExecutor, the call throws unless the destination’s executor is the host executor. Internally, RowGatherer uses mpi::requires_host_buffer(exec, comm) to decide whether to stage through host memory.

Inspection accessors#

RowGatherer exposes a small read-only surface for inspecting the cached pattern:

Method	Returns
`get_size()`	`dim<2>`: recv rows summed over all ranks (rows) × global index-space size of the index map (cols)
`get_collective_communicator()`	The shared `CollectiveCommunicator` driving the exchange
`get_const_send_idxs()`	Pointer to the local row indices being sent
`get_num_send_idxs()`	Length of the send-index array

The send-index array is stored on the same executor the row gatherer lives on, so reading it from the host requires gko::clone(host, ...) first.

How distributed `Matrix::apply` uses it#

The matrix holds one RowGatherer together with its index_map. On every executor the apply trace (Communication primitives) calls into it as follows:

rg->apply_async(b, x_halo) packs the values that need to be sent into the send buffer, synchronizes the executor, issues the all-to-all and returns the mpi::request.
The local-matrix kernel runs while the exchange is in flight (with DenseCommunicator the exchange has already completed, so the two do not overlap).
req.wait(): x_halo is now populated.
The non-local-matrix kernel applies to x_halo.
The local-matrix result and the non-local-matrix result are summed into y_local.