3. MPI-2

3.1 MPI-2 Status

It was decided at the final MPI-1 meeting (Feb. 1994) that plans for extending MPI should wait until people have had some experience with the current version of MPI. The MPI Forum held a BOF session at Supercomputing '94 to discuss the possibility of an MPI-2 effort. A decision was made to begin MPI-2 meetings in April of 1995. These meetings were held approximately every six weeks until October 11, 1997. After that meeting, the customary two month public comment period was initiated. At SuperComputing'96 (held in Pittsburgh, PA), the document was 'unveiled'. Meetings began again in January, 1997 and continued approximately every six weeks until April 25, 1997. At this meeting, the MPI-2 Document was unanimously accepted by the voting institutions. The MPI-2 Document is viewable as HTML http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-20-html/mpi2-report.html or downloadable as compressed postscript http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-20.ps.Z or downloadable as uncompressed postscript http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-20.ps .

3.2 What features are included in MPI-2?

There are several major subsections of functionality addressed in the MPI-2 Standard.

Miscellaneous Topics
Dynamic Process Management
One-Sided Communication
Extended Collective Operations
External Interfaces
Parallel I/O
Language Bindings (C++ and Fortran-90)

The I/O subcommittee was added after the MPI-2 process began. There were several other sections of the MPI-2 Document that were present during some form of the process that were removed from the document and placed in the Journal of Development (JOD). This document, which is also downloadable from the web site http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-20-jod.ps was created so that ideas that were interesting but either were either of unknown value or weren't mature would not be lost and would be documented. One chapter on Real-Time MPI which was placed in the JOD but developed into a standards body of its own. This body has a web page located at http://www.mpirt.org .

3.3 What mailing lists were being used for MPI-2?

If you wanted to participate in the discussion of a particular MPI-2 topic, send mail to majordomo@mcs.anl.gov containing:


        subscribe <list-name>  <your email address>

The current mailing lists include:


        mpi-comm@mcs.anl.gov     MPI Forum discussion list, all comments welcome
        mpi-core@mcs.anl.gov     MPI forum meeting attendees list

        mpi-dynamic    MPI Forum discussion list for dynamic process management
        mpi-1sided     MPI Forum discussion list for one-sided communication
        mpi-coll       MPI Forum discussion list for collective operations
        mpi-external   MPI Forum discussion list for external interfaces
        mpi-bind       MPI Forum discussion list for C++ and Fortran-90 bindings
        mpi-realtime   MPI Forum discussion list for real-time extensions
        mpi-io         MPI Forum discussion list for I/O

3.4 Where are the MPI-2 mailing lists archived?

The MPI-2 mailing lists are archived using hypermail. These archived mailing lists can be retrieved from http://www.mpi-forum.org/archives/mail/mail.html .

3.5 Where is the current MPI-2 document?

The MPI-2 Document can be viewed as HTML as http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-20-html/mpi2-report.html or can be downloaded in compressed postscript form as http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-20.ps.Z or as uncompressed postscript form as http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-20.ps .

3.6 Where can I find out more about MPI-2?

More information on MPI-2 is available from http://www.erc.msstate.edu/mpi/mpi2.html and http://www.mpi-forum.org . These sites contain information about minutes from MPI-2 meetings, votes, etc.

3.7 What is MPI/RT?

In the form of the MPI Forums, MPI/RT is a standards effort to design an MPI for Real-Time programming. This Forum meets approximately every six weeks to:

Create integrated messaging, scheduling, and parallel programming API together with syntax and semantics to support the emerging computational hierarchies of node architectures and gigabit/s networks efficiently.
Expand the horizons of performance-portable real-time programming
Support multiple real-time paradigms
Enhance the performance of Messaging over MPI-1 and MPI-2
Catalyze a new generation of portable parallel applications that require or benefit from the explicit use of time

3.8 Where can I find out more about MPI/RT?

The MPI/RT Forum has a web site http://www.mpirt.org .

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