Note: Currently the master branch does not build. Development is done on tschop-dev branch.

CATO (Compiler Assisted Source Transformation of OpenMP Kernels) uses LLVM and Clang to transform existing OpenMP code to MPI. This enables distributed code execution while keeping OpenMP's relatively low barrier of entry. The main focus lies on increasing the maximum problem size, which a scientific application can work on. Converting an intra-node problem into an inter-node problem makes it possible to overcome the limitation of memory of a single node.

It is important to pay attention to a right match of CATO and LLVM. Major LLVM releases tend to induce ABI breaking changes. Currently dependencies are installed from source using spack; the packages are then loaded, if initialise_environment.sh is being sourced. But using globally installations of the dependencies should also work fine. Please pay attention, dass LLVM dump calls are only available if the debug build from LLVM is used. Otherwise #define DEBUG_CATO_PASS 1 must be set to #define DEBUG_CATO_PASS 0 in src/cato/debug.h before building. An improved build script to automatise this process more is still under development.

CATO is an LLVM pass, which is applied during the optimisation phase.

$ scripts/build_pass.sh

To make sure to remove old existing files, add --rebuild flag to build_pass.sh to delete old build directory (important if you switch LLVM versions).

$ scripts/cexecute_pass.py inputfile.c -o inputfile_modified.x

Most simple way is to use the auxiliary script cexecute_pass.py. As an alternative the generation of the transformed code can also be done manually. This makes it easier to follow single steps. Those steps could be shortened but the long version is used here to get more intermediate results (useful for debugging).You need to pay attention, if your LLVM installation does use the new or legacy pass manager by default. At the moment CATO is still being refactored to use use the new pass manager together with LLVM 14. Therefore CATO needs to be used with the legacy pass manager.

1. Create IR code from inputfile.c

$ clang emit-llvm -S inputfile.c

2. Apply CATO LLVM pass to get modified IR

$ opt -load-pass-plugin=libCatoPass.so -passes=Cato inputfile.ll -S -o inputfile_modified.ll

3. Create modified LLVM bytecode from IR code

$ llvm-as inputfile_modified.ll -o inputfile_modified.bc

4. Create final binary from modified LLVM bytecode

mpicc -cc=clang -o inputfile_modified_binary.x inputfile_modified.ll libCatoRuntime.so

You need to adjust the path to libCatoPass.so and libCatoRuntime.so. The generated binary file can now be executed with mpiexec.

1. Create IR code from inputfile.c

$ clang emit-llvm -S inputfile.c

2. Apply CATO LLVM pass to get modified IR

$ opt -enable-new-pm=0 -load libCatoPass.so -Cato inputfile.ll -S -o inputfile_modified.ll

3. Create modified LLVM bytecode from IR code

$ llvm-as inputfile_modified.ll -o inputfile_modified.bc

4. Create final binary from modified LLVM bytecode

mpicc -cc=clang -o inputfile_modified_binary.x inputfile_modified.ll libCatoRuntime.so

You need to adjust the path to libCatoPass.so and libCatoRuntime.so. The generated binary file can now be executed with mpiexec.

If you are referencing CATO in a publication, please cite the following paper:

J. Squar, T. Jammer, M. Blesel, M. Kuhn and T. Ludwig, "Compiler Assisted Source Transformation of OpenMP Kernels," 2020 19th International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (ISPDC), Warsaw, Poland, 2020, pp. 44-51, doi: 10.1109/ISPDC51135.2020.00016.