Using MPI-2: Advanced Features of the Message-Passing Interface

William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, and Rajeev Thakur

See our companion book, Using MPI, 2nd edition, by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, and Anthony Skjellum, published by MIT Press, 1999; ISBN 0-262-57132-3. The MIT Press page, together with ordering information for this book, can be seen here.

Example Programs

Errata

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   • Background
   • What's New in MPI-2
   • Reading This Book
2. Getting Started with MPI-2
   • Portable Process Startup
   • Parallel I/O
   • Remote Memory Access
   • Dynamic Process Management
   • More Info on Info
   • Summary
3. Parallel I/O
   • Introduction
   • Using MPI for Simple I/O
   • Noncontiguous Accesses and Collective I/O
   • Accessing Arrays Stored in Files
   • Nonblocking I/O and Split Collective I/O
   • Shared File Pointers
   • Passing Hints to the Implementation
   • Consistency Semantics
   • File Interoperability
   • Achieving High I/O Performance with MPI
   • An Astrophysics Example
   • Summary
4. Understanding Synchronization
   • Introduction
   • Synchronization in Message Passing
   • Comparison with Shared Memory
5. Introduction to Remote Memory Operations
   • Introduction
   • Contrast with Message Passing
   • Memory Windows
   • Moving Data
   • Completing Data Transfers
   • Examples of RMA Operations
   • Pitfalls in Accessing Memory
   • Performance Tuning for RMA Operations
6. Advanced Remote Memory Access
   • Introduction
   • Lock and Unlock
   • Allocating Memory for MPI Windows
   • Global Arrays
   • Another Version of NXTVAL
   • An RMA Mutex
   • The Rest of Global Arrays
   • Differences between RMA and Shared Memory
   • Managing a Distributed Data Structure
   • Compiler Optimization and Passive Targets
   • Scalable Synchronization
   • Summary
7. Dynamic Process Management
   • Introduction
   • Creating New MPI Processes
   • Connecting MPI Processes
   • Design of the MPI Dynamic Process Routines
8. Using MPI with Threads
   • Thread Basics and Issues
   • MPI and Threads
   • Yet Another Version of NXTVAL
   • Implementing Nonblocking Collective Operations
   • Mixed-Model Programming: MPI for SMP Clusters
9. Advanced Features
   • Defining New File Data Representations
   • External Interface Functions
   • Mixed-Language Programming
   • Attribute Caching
   • Error Handling
   • Topics Not Covered in This Book
10. Conclusions
    • New Classes of Parallel Programs
    • MPI-2 Implementation Status
    • Where does MPI Go From Here?
    • Final Words

• Summary of MPI-2 Routines and Their Arguments
• MPI Resources on the World Wide Web
• Surprises, Questions, and Problems in MPI
• Standardizing External Startup with mpiexec

The MPI Standard itself, information on several MPI implementations, and related MPI locations on the Web can be found on the Argonne MPI home page.