Intel® MPI Library Developer Guide for Linux* OS

ID 768728
Date 10/31/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

Problem: High Memory Consumption Readings

Problem

The Intel® MPI Library’s virtual memory consumption appears to be unreasonably high, when using basic profiling tools.

Cause

The Intel MPI Library uses a shared virtual memory region within a node, which is mapped into each process’s virtual address space. As a result, when virtual memory consumption is queried for any of the ranks, the size of the entire memory region is reported. All ranks on a node report the size of the same shared region. Most of the virtual memory measuring tools are unaware of this shared virtual memory region, and as a result present incorrect data in this context.

Solution

Use /proc/<PID>/smaps files, which provide detailed information about a process’s memory consumption. For more information, see Evaluating Virtual Memory Consumption in Intel® MPI Library.