Memory bottleneck in chgres_cube

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

Users occasionally get out-of-memory issues when running chgres_cube for large domains. Almost always, this happens during the regridding of the 3-D winds to the edges of the grid box.

UFS_UTILS/sorc/chgres_cube.fd/atmosphere.F90

Line 347 in 570ea39

! Interpolate winds to 'd' grid.

I suspect this is because the ESMF field for winds is 4-dimensional (x,y,z wind components in the vertical).

UFS_UTILS/sorc/chgres_cube.fd/atmosphere.F90

Line 632 in 570ea39

Interpolating each wind component separately or as a field bundle would likely save memory.

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

I set up at case using GFSv16 netcdf data as input for a C1152 L128 grid. My test script and config file are on Dell: /gpfs/dell2/emc/modeling/noscrub/George.Gayno/ufs_utils.git/chgres_mem

Using 'develop' at 570ea39 required 8 nodes/6 tasks per node. Using the branch at f584c91 only required 4 nodes/6 tasks per node.

Will try additional tests.

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

Tried C3072 L65 on Dell. Using 'develop' required 30 nodes/6 tasks per node. Using the branch required 20 nodes/6 tasks per node.

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

Here is the error I get from 'FieldRegrid', which is solved my doubling the number of nodes:

Fatal error in MPI_Irecv: Invalid count, error stack:
MPI_Irecv(170): MPI_Irecv(buf=0x2b5d79127010, count=-219953152, MPI_BYTE, src=1, tag=0, comm=0x84000002, request=0x4835ba0) failed
MPI_Irecv(107): Negative count, value is -219953152

According to the ESMF group (@rsdunlapiv) this is the result of using 32 bit pointers in some ESMF routines

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

The ESMF group recommends a switch to ESMF v8.3 to help fix this. I just tried v8.3 on Hera using develop at f658c1e and all chgres regression tests passed. Will open an issue to upgrade to v8.3.

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

The ESMF group provided a test branch that fixes this - https://github.com/esmf-org/esmf/tree/feature/large-messages

I cloned and compiled this on Hera here: /scratch1/NCEPDEV/da/George.Gayno/noscrub/esmf.git/esmf

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

On Hera, I compiled 'develop' at 2a07b2c for use as the 'control'.

For the 'test', I compiled 'develop' using the update ESMF branch. This was done by modifying the build module as follows:

< setenv("ESMFMKFILE","/scratch1/NCEPDEV/da/George.Gayno/noscrub/esmf.git/esmf/lib/libO/Linux.intel.64.intelmpi.default/esmf.mk")
---
> esmf_ver=os.getenv("esmf_ver") or "8.2.1b04"
> load(pathJoin("esmf", esmf_ver))

The test case was a C1152 grid using 128 vertical levels. All config files and scripts are here: /scratch1/NCEPDEV/da/George.Gayno/ufs_utils.git/chgres_memory

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

Running the 'control' with 7 nodes/6 tasks per node, resulted in this error (see "log.fail.7nodes.develop"):

33: Fatal error in MPI_Irecv: Invalid count, error stack:
33: MPI_Irecv(170): MPI_Irecv(buf=0x2b367e533010, count=-1980497920, MPI_BYTE, src=33, tag=0, comm=0x84000002, request=0x5be22e0) failed
33: MPI_Irecv(107): Negative count, value is -1980497920

Rerunning with 8 nodes/6 tasks per node was successful. See "log.pass.8nodes.develop".

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

Running the 'test' (which used the update ESMF branch) was successful using only 5 nodes/6 tasks per node. See "log.pass.5nodes.new.esmf.branch".

So, using the new ESMF test branch eliminates the MPI error and reduces the amount of resources to run large grids.

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

Update from the ESMF team (Gerhard):

The large-message fix will be part of the upcoming v8.3.1 patch release. I will 
let you know once it's released. Of course the fix will also go into ESMF develop 
toward the 8.4 release. 

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

ESMF v8.3.1 was officially released: https://github.com/esmf-org/esmf/releases/tag/v8.3.1

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

Anning Cheng was trying to create a C3072 L128 grid using the gdas_init utility on Cactus. The wind fields in the coldstart files were not correct. I was able to repeat the problem using develop at 711a4dc. I then upgraded to ESMF v8.4.0bs08, but the problem persisted. I ran with 8 nodes/18 tasks per node, and I requested memory of 500 GB. A plot of the problem is attached:

[GeorgeGayno-NOAA]

So, the way I create the ESMF fields for 3-d winds must have some other problems. As a test, I merged the latest updates from develop to the bug_fix/chgres_memory branch. I compiled 57792e3 on Cactus then reran the test in the previous comment. The wind fields looked correct.