The following sections describe how to verify that the interconnect is setup correctly, which means that all Cluster Nodes can communicate with all other Cluster Nodes via the PCI Express interconnect by sending low-level control packets and performing remote memory access.
The Cluster Management Node functionality is optional for SISCI based applications but currently mandatory for SuperSockets operation. The Cluster Management Node will automatically distribute configuration files and simplify diagnostic of the cluster. On the Cluster Management Node, only the user-space service dis_networkmgr (the central Network Manager) needs to be running.
Without the required drivers and services running on a Cluster Node, the node will fail to communicate with other nodes. On the Cluster Nodes, the kernel services dis_mx_irm (interconnect resources driver) and dis_mx_sisci (upper level hardware services) need to be running. Next to these kernel drivers, the user-space service dis_nodemgr (node manager, which talks to the central Network Manager) needs to be active for configuration and monitoring.
Because the drivers do also appear as services, you can query their status with the usual tools of the installed operating system distribution.
C:\>sc.exe query dis_mx_irm
SERVICE_NAME: dis_irm
TYPE : 1 KERNEL_DRIVER
STATE : 4 RUNNING
(STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
CHECKPOINT : 0x0
WAIT_HINT : 0x0
If any of the required services is not running, you will find more information on the problem that may have occurred in the system log facilities. Call Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer to inspect the kernel messages, and check %WinDir%\system32\drivers\etc\dis\log. for related messages.To get the installation logs, please run each MSI with /l*xv log_install.txt switch.
To ensure that the cluster is cabled correctly, please perform the PCIe connection test as described in Chapter 4, Initial Installation, Section 2.7.4, “PCIe connection Test”.
The static interconnect test makes sures that all PCIe communication hardware are working correctly by performing a self-test, and determines if the setup and the PCIe routing is correct (matches the actual hardware topology). It will also check all PCIe connections, but this has already been done in the PCIe Connection Test. The tool to perform this test is dis_diag (default location c:\Program Files\Dolphin Express MX\Util\dis_diag).
Running dis_diag on a Cluster Node will perform a self test on the local adapter(s) and list all remote adapters that this adapter can see via the PCI Express interconnect. This means, to perform the static interconnect test on a full cluster, you will basically need to run dis_diag on each Cluster Node and see if any problems with the adapter are reported, and if the adapters in each Cluster Node can see all remote adapters installed in the other Cluster Nodes.
Normally you should invoke dis_diag with no arguments, and it will do a general test and only show the most interesting information. Advanced users may want to enable the full verbose mode by using the -V 9 command line option:
dis_diag -V 9
The -V 9 option will generate a lot of information, some parts of the information requires knowledge about the PCIe chipset and the PCIe specification in general. The diagnostic module will collect various usage and error information over time. This can be cleared by using the -clear command line option:
dis_diag -clear
An example output of dis_diag for a Cluster Node which is part of a 2 node cluster and using one MXH830 adapter per Cluster Node looks like this:
[root@Hetty ~]# /opt/DIS/sbin/dis_diag
================================================================================
Dolphin diagnostic tool -- dis_diag version 5.5.0 ( Tue Jan 10th 14:54:02 CEST 2018 )
================================================================================
dis_diag compiled in 64 bit mode
Driver : Dolphin IRM (GX) 5.5.0.0 Jan 10th 2018 (rev 39220)
Date : Wed Mar 29 19:02:52 CEST 2018
System : Linux Maxwell 3.10.0-514.10.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Mar 3 00:04:05 UTC 2017
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Number of configured local adapters found: 1
Adapter 0 > Type : MXH830
NodeId : 4
Serial number : MXH830-AA-000008
MXH chip family : Microchip - PFX
MXH chip vendorId : 0x11f8
MXH chip device : 0x0830
MXH chip revision : 0x0 (ZA)
EEPROM version NTB mode : 01
EEPROM vendor info : 0x0000
EEPROM swmode[3:0] : 0111
Card revision : AA
Topology type : Not determined
Topology Autodetect : No
Number of enabled links : 1
Max payload size (MPS) : 256
Multicast group size : 2 MB
Prefetchable memory size : 4096 MB (BAR2)
Non-prefetchable size : NA
Clock mode slot : Global
Clock mode link : Global
PCIe slot state : x0, Gen3 (8 GT/s)
PCIe slot capabilities : x16, Gen3 (8 GT/s)
************************* MXH ADAPTER 0 LINK 0 STATE *************************
Link 0 downtime : 2 seconds
Link 0 state : DISABLED
Link 0 configuration : NTB
Link 0 required : x4, Gen1 (2.5 GT/s)
Link 0 capabilities : NA
*************** MXH ADAPTER 0, PARTNER INFORMATION FOR LINK 0 ***************
Partner information not available
***************************** TEST OF ADAPTER 0 *****************************
OK: MXH chip alive in adapter 0.
OK: Link alive in adapter 0.
==> Local adapter 0 ok.
[WARN] Node 8 not reachable, but is an entry in the dishosts.conf file
************************ TOPOLOGY SEEN FROM ADAPTER 0 ************************
Adapters found: 2
----- List of all nodes found:
Nodes detected: 0004 0008
*********************** SESSION STATUS FROM ADAPTER 0 ***********************
Node 4: Session valid
Node 8: Session valid
----------------------------------
dis_diag discovered 0 note(s).
dis_diag discovered 0 warning(s).
dis_diag discovered 0 error(s).
TEST RESULT: *PASSED*
The static interconnect test passes if dis_diag delivers TEST RESULT: *PASSED* and reports the same topology (remote adapters) on all Cluster Nodes.
While the static interconnect test sends very a few packets over the links to probe remote nodes, the Interconnect Load Test puts significant stress on the interconnect and observes if any data transmissions have to be retried due to link errors. This can happen if cables are not correctly connected, i.e. plugged in without connector latches locking correctly. Before running this test, make sure your cluster is connected and configured correctly by running the tests described in the previous sections.
This test can be performed from within the Dolphin dis_admin GUI tool. Please refer to Appendix A, dis_admin Reference for details.
To run this test from the command line, simply invoke sciconntest (default location c:\Program Files\Dolphin Express MX\Demo\sciconntest) on all Cluster Nodes.
It is recommended to run this test from the dis_admin GUI (see previous section) because it will perform a more controlled variant of this test and give more helpful results.
All instances of sciconntest will connect and start to exchange data, which can take up to 30 seconds. The output of sciconntest on one Cluster Node which is part of a 9-Cluster Node cluster looks like this:
/opt/DIS/bin/sciconntest compiled Oct 2 2007 : 22:29:09 ---------------------------- Local node-id : 76 Local adapter no. : 0 Segment size : 8192 MinSize : 4 Time to run (sec) : 10 Idelay : 0 No Write : 0 Loopdelay : 0 Delay : 0 Bad : 0 Check : 0 Mcheck : 0 Max nodes : 256 rnl : 0 Callbacks : Yes ---------------------------- Probing all nodes Response from remote node 4 Response from remote node 8 Response from remote node 12 Response from remote node 68 Response from remote node 72 Response from remote node 132 Response from remote node 136 Response from remote node 140 Local segment (id=4, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=4, size=8192) is shared. Local segment (id=8, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=8, size=8192) is shared. Local segment (id=12, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=12, size=8192) is shared. Local segment (id=68, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=68, size=8192) is shared. Local segment (id=72, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=72, size=8192) is shared. Local segment (id=132, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=132, size=8192) is shared. Local segment (id=136, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=136, size=8192) is shared. Local segment (id=140, size=8192) is created. Local segment (id=140, size=8192) is shared. Connecting to 8 nodes Connect to remote segment, node 4 Remote segment on node 4 is connected. Connect to remote segment, node 8 Remote segment on node 8 is connected. Connect to remote segment, node 12 Remote segment on node 12 is connected. Connect to remote segment, node 68 Remote segment on node 68 is connected. Connect to remote segment, node 72 Remote segment on node 72 is connected. Connect to remote segment, node 132 Remote segment on node 132 is connected. Connect to remote segment, node 136 Remote segment on node 136 is connected. Connect to remote segment, node 140 Remote segment on node 140 is connected. SCICONNTEST_REPORT NUM_TESTLOOPS_EXECUTED 1 NUM_NODES_FOUND 8 NUM_ERRORS_DETECTED 0 node 4 : Found node 4 : Number of failures : 0 node 4 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) node 8 : Found node 8 : Number of failures : 0 node 8 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) node 12 : Found node 12 : Number of failures : 0 node 12 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) node 68 : Found node 68 : Number of failures : 0 node 68 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) node 72 : Found node 72 : Number of failures : 0 node 72 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) node 132 : Found node 132 : Number of failures : 0 node 132 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) node 136 : Found node 136 : Number of failures : 0 node 136 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) node 140 : Found node 140 : Number of failures : 0 node 140 : Longest failure : 0.00 (ms) SCICONNTEST_REPORT_END SCI_CB_DISCONNECT:Segment removed on the other node disconnecting.....
The test passes if all Cluster Nodes report 0 failures for all remote Cluster Nodes. If the test identifies any failures, you can determine the closest pair(s) of Cluster Nodes for which these failures are reported and check the cabled connection between them. The numerical NodeIds shown in this output are the Cluster NodeIds of the adapters (which identify an adapter in the PCI Express interconnect).
Although this test can be run while a system is in production, but you have to take into account that performance of the productive applications will be reduced significantly while this test is running. If links actually show problems, they might be temporarily disabled, stopping all communication until rerouting takes place.
Once the correct installation and setup and the basic functionality of the interconnect have been verified, it is possible to perform a set of low-level benchmarks to determine the base-line performance of the interconnect without any additional software layers. The tests that are relevant for this are scibench2 (streaming remote memory PIO access performance), scipp (request-response remote memory PIO write performance), dma_bench (streaming remote memory DMA access performance) and intr_bench (remote interrupt performance).
All these tests need to run on two Cluster Nodes (A and B) and are started in the same manner:
Determine the NodeId of both Cluster Nodes using the query command (default path C:\Program Files\Dolphin Express MX\Examples\bin\query). The NodeId is reported as "Local node-id".
On node A, start the server-side benchmark with the options -server and -rn <NodeId of B>, like:
$ scibench2 -server -rn 8
On Cluster Node B, start the client-side benchmark with the options -client and -rn <NodeId of A>, like:
$ scibench2 -client -rn 4
The test results are reported by the client.
The following results are measured using the MXH930 card (Gen4, x16)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message Total Vector Transfer Transfer time Bandwidth
size size length time per message
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
64 16384 256 69.55 us 0.27 us 235.57 MBytes/s
128 32768 256 70.07 us 0.27 us 467.63 MBytes/s
256 65536 256 66.13 us 0.26 us 991.08 MBytes/s
512 131072 256 64.77 us 0.25 us 2023.65 MBytes/s
1024 262144 256 65.98 us 0.26 us 3973.08 MBytes/s
2048 524288 256 69.25 us 0.27 us 7570.95 MBytes/s
4096 1048576 256 76.81 us 0.30 us 13651.38 MBytes/s
8192 2097152 256 94.94 us 0.37 us 22090.40 MBytes/s
16384 4194304 256 162.86 us 0.64 us 25753.73 MBytes/s
32768 8388608 256 312.17 us 1.22 us 26871.84 MBytes/s
65536 16777216 256 611.22 us 2.39 us 27448.83 MBytes/s
131072 33554432 256 1209.15 us 4.72 us 27750.48 MBytes/s
262144 67108864 256 2405.18 us 9.40 us 27901.78 MBytes/s
524288 67108864 128 2402.11 us 18.77 us 27937.52 MBytes/s
1048576 67108864 64 2402.21 us 37.53 us 27936.29 MBytes/s
2097152 67108864 32 2400.34 us 75.01 us 27958.01 MBytes/s
4194304 67108864 16 2400.34 us 150.02 us 27958.12 MBytes/s
8388608 67108864 8 2400.29 us 300.04 us 27958.67 MBytes/s
16777216 67108864 4 2400.31 us 600.08 us 27958.42 MBytes/s
33554432 67108864 2 2400.15 us 1200.07 us 27960.29 MBytes/s
67108864 67108864 1 2400.20 us 2400.20 us 27959.73 MBytes/s
The scipp SISCI benchmark sends a message of the specified size to the remote system. The remote system is polling for incoming data and will send a similar message back to the first node.
The minimal round-trip latency for writing to remote memory is extremely low using PCI Express networks.
The following results are measured using a MXH830 card (Gen3 x16).
Ping Pong data transfer:
size retries latency (usec) latency/2 (usec)
0 248 1.391 0.695
4 495 1.258 0.629
8 499 1.259 0.629
16 499 1.260 0.630
32 507 1.290 0.645
64 516 1.304 0.652
128 515 1.309 0.654
256 532 1.376 0.688
512 552 1.457 0.728
1024 582 1.582 0.791
2048 654 1.897 0.949
4096 804 2.542 1.271
8192 1106 3.854 1.927
The interrupt latency is affected by the operating system and can therefore vary.
Average unidirectional interrupt time : 2.515 us. Average round trip interrupt time : 5.030 us.