Quick Start

Here is a set of steps for setting up and minimally testing mpich. Details and instructions for a more thorough tour of mpich's features, including installing, validating, benchmarking, and using the performance evaluation tools, are given in the following sections.

1.

Get mpich-*.tar.Z by anonymous ftp from info.mcs.anl.gov in the directory pub/mpi.

2.

zcat mpich-*.tar.Z | tar xvf -

3.

cd mpich

4.

configure -arch=sun4 -device=ch_p4 (for example)

5.

make

6.

On workstation networks, or to run on a single workstation, edit mpich/util/machines/machines.sun4 file to reflect your local host names. (sun4 is used here as an example; most other workstations are supported as well.) On parallel machines, this step is not needed. See the README file in the mpich/util/machines directory.

7.

cd examples/basic

8.

make cpi

9.

mpirun -np 4 cpi

At this point you have run an MPI program on your system. In the following sections we go through these steps in more detail, and describe other aspects of the mpich distribution you might want to explore.