Just out of curiosity, can you compile ParaView without MPI or use the ParaView binaries from <a href="http://paraview.org">paraview.org</a>? I am asking this because we have been tracking down a nasty rendering performance issue that only shows up when ParaView is linked against MPI.<div>
<br></div><div>-berk <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Albina, Frank <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:frank.albina@sauber-motorsport.com">frank.albina@sauber-motorsport.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">Dear
ParaView users & developers,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">I am</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> trying to reduce </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">the time </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">spent</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">performing </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">generic 3D </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">surface rendering</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">A lot has been</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">achieved </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">by using ParaView driven</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">by python scripting al</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">ready but </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">actually </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">'d </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">like to achieve more. At the time being,
all rendering </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">is
performed using </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">CPU
rendering with the MESA libraries</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> and</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">
I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> have start</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">ed</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> investigating if it could be worth
performing the rendering using GPUs inst</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">ead of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">using</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">N</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> CPUs in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">parallel</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">For
the purpose of checking the GPU performance over CPUs, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> have devised a s</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">imple benchmark</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> wi</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">th a python script which </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">drives the surface rendering</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">. The script performs the
generation </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">of 60
images </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">and dumps
them onto disk</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">
in JPEG format</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">When performing this task, I
have been </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">tumbling
upon the following rendering times for the generation of the aforementioned 60
images</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">, using
different versions of paraview</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> on an "old" workstation, which is my guinea pig for
this benchmark</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="468" style="width:351.0pt;border-collapse:collapse">
<tbody><tr style="min-height:14.25pt">
<td width="119" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:89.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">Paraview 3.8.1</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
<td width="120" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:90.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">Paraview 3.10.1</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
<td width="115" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:86.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">Paraview 3.12.0</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
<td width="115" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:86.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">Paraview 3.14.1</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="min-height:14.25pt">
<td width="119" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:89.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">138.12</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">s</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
<td width="120" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:90.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">591.06</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">s</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
<td width="115" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:86.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">592.53</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">s</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
<td width="115" nowrap valign="bottom" style="width:86.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;min-height:14.25pt">
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">594.10</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif"">s</span><span style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">What
is striking is that the rendering time </span><u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">is 4 times less(!)</span></u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">with PV v3.8.1 than with all subsequent
versions. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">I had already
noticed something similar when running MESA on dissimilar architectures, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">but I assumed that the culprit
were the MESA libraries used</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">. Here, the HW and libraries are the same, so I am enclined to
believe that</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">I am</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">missing something here in the </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">general </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">rendering </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">settin</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">gs which do not affect PV </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">v3.8.1 but induce a big
performance hit for all PV versions above 3.10.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">s anybody aware</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> of rendering settings which could
induce such a performance difference?</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">BTW,
for each rendering, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">a
window opens with the OpenGL tag in the window title bar, so I am quite sure
that I am not using any S</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">W rendering, all the more as all the PV versions I have compiled
have VTK_</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">OPENGL_HAS</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">_OSMESA set to off.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">A
few more details</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">
concerning the test I have been running</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">-</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">Workstation:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> Linux workstation with SuSE SLED 10</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">2 x Intel
Xeon Dual core 5160 @ 3.00GHz</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"BMWTypeLight","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">2</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> x NVIDIA Quadro FX3500
(NV71GL chipset)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">-</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> Paraview version 3.8.1, 3.10.1, 3.12.0
and 3.14.1 were compiled with OpenGL support</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">, Qt v4.6.x, python v2.7, OpenMPI v1.4.x
using the GCC compiler v4.5.x.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> -
The script</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"> is run
using pvpython (and not pvbatch) in order to force the assignement of the gr</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">aphics card:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">
pvserver -display localhost:0.0 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">
Then the rendering script runs with pvpython from the command line</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">. Within the script, a
Connect("localhost",11111) forces the connection to the pvserver
running on localhost.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">Any
suggestions welcome.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">Best regards </span><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></font></span></p>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">Frank Albina</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d">.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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