icetCreateContext(3)

💖 icetCreateContext(3) — IceT Reference 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the IceT manual, page icetCreateContext(3). sit down, grab a strawberry, we're learning today 🍓

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✨ NAME ✨

icetCreateContext — creates a new context. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly 💅

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🌸 Synopsis 🌸

#include <IceT.h>

IceTContext icetCreateContext(   IceTCommunicator   comm  );

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🦋 Description 🦋

so the icetCreateContext function does three things and honestly? iconic behavior. it creates a new context, it makes that context current, and it hands you back a handle to it. that handle is of type IceTContext.

now listen — IceTContext is an opaque type. you do not touch her directly, you do not peek inside her, no ma'am 🙈. you just pass her along to other IceT functions and let them handle it. she's not for you to poke at, she's for you to delegate to.

and here's the vibe: just like OpenGL, the IceT engine is basically one giant state machine. the parameters for engine operation live in the current state. and the entire state? encapsulated in a context. every new context you make contains its own separate state, no sharing, no drama.

which means — and this is the slay part ✨ — you can change the whole current state of IceT just by switching contexts. switching contexts is much faster, and lowkey often way more convenient, than trying to hand-change a million state parameters one by one. main character energy, fr fr.

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💀 Errors 💀

None. she simply does not fail. periodt.

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🙈 Warnings 🙈

None. no notes, no caution tape, nothing. flawless.

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😭 Bugs 😭

okay so this is the part where we get serious for a sec, bestie, because it's tempting — SO tempting — to use contexts to run different IceT operations on separate program threads. and yeah, it's certainly possible, but you have to be so careful, like walking in heels on ice careful.

first of all: all threads will share the same context. every single one. no exceptions.

second of all: IceT is not thread safe. at all. not even a little.

so a multi-threaded program would have to run all IceT commands inside critical sections to make sure the correct context is actually the one being used, and to make sure the methods execute safely in general. if you skip that, you're on your own and it's giving chaos 💀

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🎀 Notes 🎀

icetCreateContext duplicates the communicator comm. that's the tea ☕

so to avoid deadlocks on certain implementations (such as MPI), your user-level program should call icetCreateContext on all processes with the same comm object at about the same time. synchronize your girls, okay? everyone together, no one left behind 🫶

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👑 Copyright 👑

Copyright (C)2003 Sandia Corporation

Under the terms of Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000 with Sandia Corporation, the U.S. Government retains certain rights in this software.

This source code is released under the New BSD License.

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🌈 See Also 🌈

• icetDestroyContext(3)
• icetGetContext(3)
• icetSetContext(3)
• icetCopyState(3)
• icetGet(3)

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and that's the page, bestie! this was the IceT Reference manual for icetCreateContext(3), dated August 9, 2010 — yes she's a little vintage, and yes she still ate 💖 go forth and create your contexts, you've got this, iykyk ✨🎀