Charm++ parallel programming system

[Robert Steinke <rsteinke AT uwyo.edu>]

I'm having a problem with my charm application.

Before I get into the problem, I tried to use the ccs_tools charm 
debugger, but haven't been able to yet.  I read in the manual that it 
only works for net-* versions of charm, and I am running on an mpi-* 
version.  The process of getting my code to run on a net-* version 
started to turn into a real mess.  For example I'm using the parallel 
version of the NetCDF library that requires MPI.  I could probably get 
it running on a net-* version, but my first question is whether that's 
the right road to be going down. Is it likely the ccs_tools debugger 
will be useful for solving this problem, or is there something else I 
can do?

Here's the problem:

In an entry method of one object I have a loop that sends out messages 
to every element of a chare array.  I'm sending an individual message to 
each object in a loop, not a broadcast through the array proxy, because 
I need to send different parameters to each object.  Like this:

for (ii = 0; ii < proxySize; ii++)
{
  proxy[ii].message(parameters[ii]);
}

When proxySize is large and I send a lot of messages (about 37,000) a 
couple percent of them never arrive.  The missing messages are scattered 
around the array.  When I send a small number of messages they all arrive.

Has anyone experienced something like this before?

I was hoping that the ccs_tools debugger would be able to do things like 
show me the queued messages so I can see messages being sent and 
received so I can tell if this is really a problem with charm not 
delivering messages or if I'm doing something wrong.  Is this something 
that ccs_tools could show me?

Thanks for the help,

Bob Steinke