Basic HTML version of Foils prepared 10 Oct 1995

Foil 6 Some Difficulties with MPI

From Fox Presentation Fall 1995 CPS615 Basic Simulation Track for Computational Science -- Fall Semester 95. by Geoffrey C. Fox


1 Kitchen Sink has 129 functions and each has many arguments
  • This completeness is strength and weakness!
  • Hard to implement efficiently and hard to learn
2 It is not a complete operating environment and does not have ability to create and spawn processes etc.
3 PVM is previous dominant approach
  • It is very simple with much less functionality than MPI
  • However it runs on essentially all machines including workstation clusters
  • Further it is complete albeit simple operating environment
4 MPI outside distributed computing world with HTTP of the Web, ATM protocols and systems like ISIS from Cornell
5 However it does look as though MPI is being adopted as general messaging system by parallel computer vendors

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© on Tue Oct 7 1997