139 lines
6.8 KiB
HTML
139 lines
6.8 KiB
HTML
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<!-- This manual is for FFTW
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(version 3.3.10, 10 December 2020).
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Copyright (C) 2003 Matteo Frigo.
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Copyright (C) 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
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manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
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preserved on all copies.
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Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
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manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
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entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
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permission notice identical to this one.
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Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
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<title>Thread safety (FFTW 3.3.10)</title>
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<link href="index.html" rel="start" title="Top">
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<link href="Concept-Index.html" rel="index" title="Concept Index">
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<link href="index.html#SEC_Contents" rel="contents" title="Table of Contents">
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<link href="Multi_002dthreaded-FFTW.html" rel="up" title="Multi-threaded FFTW">
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<link href="Distributed_002dmemory-FFTW-with-MPI.html" rel="next" title="Distributed-memory FFTW with MPI">
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<link href="How-Many-Threads-to-Use_003f.html" rel="prev" title="How Many Threads to Use?">
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<span id="Thread-safety"></span><div class="header">
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<p>
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Previous: <a href="How-Many-Threads-to-Use_003f.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">How Many Threads to Use?</a>, Up: <a href="Multi_002dthreaded-FFTW.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Multi-threaded FFTW</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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</div>
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<hr>
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<span id="Thread-safety-1"></span><h3 class="section">5.4 Thread safety</h3>
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<span id="index-threads-1"></span>
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<span id="index-OpenMP-3"></span>
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<span id="index-thread-safety-1"></span>
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<p>Users writing multi-threaded programs (including OpenMP) must concern
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themselves with the <em>thread safety</em> of the libraries they
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use—that is, whether it is safe to call routines in parallel from
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multiple threads. FFTW can be used in such an environment, but some
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care must be taken because the planner routines share data
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(e.g. wisdom and trigonometric tables) between calls and plans.
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</p>
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<p>The upshot is that the only thread-safe routine in FFTW is
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<code>fftw_execute</code> (and the new-array variants thereof). All other routines
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(e.g. the planner) should only be called from one thread at a time. So,
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for example, you can wrap a semaphore lock around any calls to the
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planner; even more simply, you can just create all of your plans from
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one thread. We do not think this should be an important restriction
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(FFTW is designed for the situation where the only performance-sensitive
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code is the actual execution of the transform), and the benefits of
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shared data between plans are great.
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</p>
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<p>Note also that, since the plan is not modified by <code>fftw_execute</code>,
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it is safe to execute the <em>same plan</em> in parallel by multiple
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threads. However, since a given plan operates by default on a fixed
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array, you need to use one of the new-array execute functions (see <a href="New_002darray-Execute-Functions.html">New-array Execute Functions</a>) so that different threads compute the transform of different data.
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</p>
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<p>(Users should note that these comments only apply to programs using
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shared-memory threads or OpenMP. Parallelism using MPI or forked processes
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involves a separate address-space and global variables for each process,
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and is not susceptible to problems of this sort.)
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</p>
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<p>The FFTW planner is intended to be called from a single thread. If you
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really must call it from multiple threads, you are expected to grab
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whatever lock makes sense for your application, with the understanding
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that you may be holding that lock for a long time, which is undesirable.
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</p>
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<p>Neither strategy works, however, in the following situation. The
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“application” is structured as a set of “plugins” which are unaware
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of each other, and for whatever reason the “plugins” cannot coordinate
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on grabbing the lock. (This is not a technical problem, but an
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organizational one. The “plugins” are written by independent agents,
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and from the perspective of each plugin’s author, each plugin is using
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FFTW correctly from a single thread.) To cope with this situation,
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starting from FFTW-3.3.5, FFTW supports an API to make the planner
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thread-safe:
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</p>
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<div class="example">
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<pre class="example">void fftw_make_planner_thread_safe(void);
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</pre></div>
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<span id="index-fftw_005fmake_005fplanner_005fthread_005fsafe"></span>
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<p>This call operates by brute force: It just installs a hook that wraps a
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lock (chosen by us) around all planner calls. So there is no magic and
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you get the worst of all worlds. The planner is still single-threaded,
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but you cannot choose which lock to use. The planner still holds the
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lock for a long time, but you cannot impose a timeout on lock
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acquisition. As of FFTW-3.3.5 and FFTW-3.3.6, this call does not work
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when using OpenMP as threading substrate. (Suggestions on what to do
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about this bug are welcome.) <em>Do not use
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<code>fftw_make_planner_thread_safe</code> unless there is no other choice,</em>
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such as in the application/plugin situation.
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</p><hr>
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<div class="header">
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<p>
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Previous: <a href="How-Many-Threads-to-Use_003f.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">How Many Threads to Use?</a>, Up: <a href="Multi_002dthreaded-FFTW.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Multi-threaded FFTW</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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