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The Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard

What is MPI?

MPI is a library specification for message-passing, proposed as a standard by a broadly based committee of vendors, implementors, and users.
  • The MPI standard is available.
  • MPI was designed for high performance on both massively parallel machines and on workstation clusters.
  • MPI is widely available, with both free available and vendor-supplied implementations.
  • MPI was developed by a broadly based committee of vendors, implementors, and users.
  • Information for implementors of MPI is available.
  • Test Suites for MPI implementations are available.

    • How can I learn about MPI?

    Materials for learning MPI
    Papers discussing the design of MPI and its implementations
    Attend meetings on MPI: EuroMPI 2012

    What Libraries and applications are available in MPI?

    A number of libraries and applications that use MPI are available.

    Where is MPI going?

    The MPI Forum has completed an effort to extend MPI. Information is available from the MPI Forum Home Page.

    What tools related to MPI are available?

    A number of tools for an MPI environment exist.

    What papers have been published about MPI?

    A list of papers that either discuss MPI or use MPI in applications is available.

    How does MPI compare to other message-passing systems?

    For technical computing, MPI has displaced most other message-passing systems. For a comparison of MPI and PVM, see Why are PVM and MPI So Different by William Gropp and Ewing Lusk (The Fourth European PVM - MPI Users' Group Meeting). A longer version entitled PVM and MPI are completely different is also available. A discussion of the reasons for the differences is available in Goals Guiding Design: PVM and MPI.

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