Hi,
I've run into a problem where omp_in_parallel() is returning 0 where I
expect it to return 1. The minimal working example is:
#include <omp.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
const std::size_t problem_size = 10000;
int main(void) {
std::vector<bool> parallel_checks(problem_size, false);
#pragma omp parallel for
for (std::size_t i = 0; i < problem_size; i++) {
parallel_checks[i] = omp_in_parallel();
}
for (std::size_t i = 0; i < problem_size; i++) {
if (!parallel_checks[i]) {
std::cout << "failed at i = " << i << "\n";
}
}
return 0;
}
where parallel_checks[i] should be true for all i. This fails only
inconsistently so I've attached a slightly longer version that runs this
check thousands of times. On my personal computer (4 cores, g++ 9.3.0),
it fails about 10-30 times out of 100,000 attempts (failure meaning that
any element in parallel_checks[] is false). On a supercomputing node I
have access to (64 cores, g++ 11.2.0), it fails much more frequently
(300-900 attempts out of 1000). I've tested this across optimization
settings and while the numbers vary a bit, it is always a problem even
without optimizations on.
Am I misunderstanding what omp_in_parallel() is supposed to provide?
Does it not guarantee a true value at any point inside a parallel section?
Thanks for your help.
Best,
- Matthias
#include <omp.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
const std::size_t problem_size = 10000;
// Increase to 100000 for better sample size
const std::size_t num_tries = 1000;
int main(void) {
std::size_t num_problems = 0;
for (std::size_t attempt = 0; attempt < num_tries; attempt += 1) {
std::vector<bool> parallel_checks(problem_size, false);
#pragma omp parallel for
for (std::size_t i = 0; i < problem_size; i++) {
parallel_checks[i] = omp_in_parallel();
}
for (std::size_t i = 0; i < problem_size; i++) {
if (!parallel_checks[i]) {
num_problems += 1;
break;
}
}
}
std::cout << num_problems << " failed out of " << num_tries << "\n";
return 0;
}