Parallel programming homewrok: parallel grep using MPI

This is my solution to an homework done at the PARALLEL PROGRAMMING course at Politecnico di Milano in 2022.

The prompt was to build a parallel version of the grep program using MPI. The homework prompt is aviable in Grep_Homework_Question notebook while my solution is in theGrep_Homework_Solution notebook.

You can open the solution directly on colab:

Setup

This homework is in C++ so you need a development envirorment that supports it, if you need help I found this good guide.

You also need to install MPI.

To run the notebooks you need to have Python installed.

Compile and run

To compile use:

mpicxx -fdiagnostics-color=always -g src/grep-main.cpp src/grep.cpp -o dest/grep-mpi.exe
mpicxx -fdiagnostics-color=always -g src/grep-sequential.cpp -o dest/grep-sequential.exe

And to run:

mpiexec -np 1 dest/grep-sequential matter input_file.txt
mpiexec -np 8 dest/grep-mpi matter input_file.txt

Project structure

The following files and folder are present:

• Grep_Homework_Question.ipynb: contains the homework prompt.
• Grep_Homework_Solution.ipynb: contains my solution.
• input_file.txt: The input file to test the program
• src/: Folder containing cpp source files.
  • grep-sequential.cpp: A sequential implementation of grep which also measures the enlapsed time.
  • grep-main.cpp: The main function of the parallel implementation.
  • grep.cpp: The implementation grep-mpi helper functions the parallel implementation.
  • grep.h: The header file of grep-mpi helper functions the parallel implementation.
• outputs/: Folder which will contain the outputs.
  • output-correct.txt: The correct output of the normal grep.
• dest/: Folder which will contain the compiled executable files.
• .vscode/: Folder containing some VS Code configurations.