Some Key Features of MPI
An MPI program defines a set of processes, each executing the same program (SPMD)
- (usually one process per parallel computer node)
… that communicate by calling MPI messaging functions
- (point-to-point and collective)
… and can be constructed in a modular fashion
- (communication contexts are the key to MPI libraries)
Also
- Support for Process Groups -- messaging in subsets of processors
- Support for application dependent (virtual) topologies analogous to distribution types in HPF
- Inquiry routines to find out properties of the environment such as number of processors