Broadcast arbitrary types

[Paras Kumar]

Dear Deal.II community,

Could someone please confirm if deal.II offers an analogue of MPI_Bcast(), i.e. a function to broadcast arbitrary types, since there are functions like dealii::Utilities::MPI::gather<T>().

An alternative solution could be to pack the type into a stream using dealii::Utilities::pack<T>() and then call MPI_Bcast() myself on this packaged stream.

Best regards,

Paras

[Wolfgang Bangerth]

On 5/21/20 4:55 AM, Paras Kumar wrote:
>
> Could someone please confirm if deal.II offers an analogue of MPI_Bcast(),
> i.e. a function to broadcast arbitrary types, since there are functions like
> dealii::Utilities::MPI::gather<T>().
> An alternative solution could be to pack the type into a stream using
> dealii::Utilities::pack<T>() and then call MPI_Bcast() myself on this packaged
> stream.

There is not currently a function to do that, though if you look at how
gather<T> is written, you'll immediately see how to write a corresponding
broadcast<T> function. We'd be very happy to accept a patch that adds such a
function.

Best
W.


--
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Wolfgang Bangerth email: bang...@colostate.edu
www: http://www.math.colostate.edu/~bangerth/

[Paras Kumar]

Dear Wolfgang,

Thank you for the reply. I will try to add it soon.

Best,

Paras