Parfor loop just hangs, CPU usage goes to zero

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JohnDapper
JohnDapper on 14 Mar 2016
Answered: 海粟 吴 on 30 May 2024
Hi all. Here is a sample code of what I am attempting to run.
parfor i = 1:num
answer(:,i) = someFunction(someData(:,i));
end
Key information: "someFunction" is a C++ mex file. "someData" is a memmapfile (memmapfilename.data) because it is too large to be loaded onto each worker
Oddly, the parfor loop just hangs, the CPU usage goes to zero, and when I CTRL+C, here is what I get:
Operation terminated by user during distcomp.remoteparfor/getCompleteIntervals (line
127)
In parallel_function>distributed_execution (line 820)
[tags, out] = P.getCompleteIntervals(chunkSize);
In parallel_function (line 587)
R = distributed_execution(...
This isn't an issue if I replace the "parfor" with a simple "for" - everything works fine. What seems to happen is that some of the workers become unresponsive. After the above issue is encountered, even running a simple command such as
pctRunOnAll 1+1
will return "2" on only some, but not all, workers.
Any help would be great. A fresh re-installation did not help. Validation for "parpool" passed.
  6 Comments
David Saidman
David Saidman on 14 Jan 2020
Did anybody get any success with this? I'm having exact same 2017b, definitely no keyboard statement.
If I wait a bit, it ends up running but on a single CPU (event tho I have 18 in my pool on a cpu with 20 physical and 40 logical cores, about 10gb spare memory in performance monitor).
海粟 吴
海粟 吴 on 30 May 2024
parallel.internal.parfor.ParforEngine/getCompleteIntervals
位置 parallel_function>distributed_execution (第 746 行)
[tags, out] = P.getCompleteIntervals(chunkSize);
位置 parallel_function (第 578 行)
R = distributed_execution(...
Same problem observed in 2024a, this problem remains for 7 years, and no solution came out yet.

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Answers (8)

Dave Behera
Dave Behera on 24 Mar 2016
It seems that there is a deadlock when the workers are trying to the access the file using the same object (that you got from memmapfile). Due to that, the progress is getting stalled with zero CPU usage and no abort message.
Can you try creating a separate memmapfile object within each parfor iteration and passing it to the someFunction function? This may make the file access thread-safe.
Also, could you try the same workflow with spmd?
  9 Comments
Arabarra
Arabarra on 11 Jan 2021
Same problem here. In my case it is not reproductible, sometimes it will work, sometimes not. No deadlocks or anything suspicious in the code.
海粟 吴
海粟 吴 on 30 May 2024
Agree on what had been discussed above, it happened on 2024a too. When the MATLAB could solve this problem. Soon or Nerver?

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arvid Martens
arvid Martens on 9 Jan 2018
I noticed that the problem started to occur after I updated the drivers of the GPUs that are being used during the calculations. Rolling back the drivers resolved the problem. However, new GPU hardware is on its way, as the current ones are pretty old. So I hope the problem is resolved by then.
Is there a way to throw an error when this stalling occurs? I could write an error handling to reduce the time lost by this stalling.

Andrea Stevanato
Andrea Stevanato on 13 Jul 2018
I have the same error with matlab 2018a.

Sanjay Manohar
Sanjay Manohar on 3 Jun 2019
Edited: Sanjay Manohar on 3 Jun 2019
I was having the same parfor problem, until I noticed I had a "keyboard" instruction in my code.

DeepSea
DeepSea on 15 Aug 2021
I've been stucked in this problem for couples of weeks, and fixed it by removing "continue" in an if-judgement and a for-loop.
for CondA
...
if CondB
continue; % Avoid using "continue"
end
...
end

Aditya Shukla
Aditya Shukla on 23 Oct 2021
I suddenly got this problem since yesterday, before which all the code ran nicely. I really do not know why this happened. it is so annoying. Any one found a solution?

Tianzong Wang
Tianzong Wang on 27 Oct 2022
Same here, most cores are not working. Any suggestions? And what is the JCEF?

海粟 吴
海粟 吴 on 30 May 2024
Exactly same problem encountered in 2024a!!

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