Scripted HTML version of Foils prepared 11 November 1996

Foil 6 Some Difficulties with MPI

From CPS615-Initial Lecture on MPI ending with discussion of basic MPI_SEND Delivered Lectures of CPS615 Basic Simulation Track for Computational Science -- 31 October 96. by Geoffrey C. Fox *
Secs 407.5
Kitchen Sink has 129 functions and each has many arguments
  • This completeness is strength and weakness!
  • Hard to implement efficiently and hard to learn
It is not a complete operating environment and does not have ability to create and spawn processes etc.
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
MPI outside distributed computing world with HTTP of the Web, ATM protocols and systems like ISIS from Cornell
However it does look as though MPI is being adopted as general messaging system by parallel computer vendors

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