Various Styles/Terms in Messaging Passing I
Asynchronous Communication:The style in which a node is free to send messages to any other node at any time and regardless of hardware connectivity and "node readiness"
Blocking and Non-Blocking Communication:
- In the blocking style, receive operations suspend the calling program until a suitable message has arrived.
- In the non-blocking style, a read immediately returns with (typically) a status code indicating whether or not a suitable message has arrived. Message send operations usually return as soon as the data is safely "in transit" whether or not it has been received
Collective Communication: High level communication calls that carry out send/receive operations on groups of nodes e.g. broadcast (all) or multicast (partial set). These routines free user from determining optimal method to carry out such communication and can lead to significant performance gain and ease of programming.