MacResearch

This arrived the 18th of November in the announce@open-mpi.org mailing list.

The Open MPI Team is pleased to announced the release of Open MPI
version 1.0.  An entirely new MPI implementation, Open MPI combines the
strengths of several leading MPI projects, including LAM/MPI (Indiana
University), FT-MPI (Innovative Computing Laboratory/University of
Tennessee), LA-MPI (Los Alamos National Laboratory), and PACX MPI (High
Performance Computing Center at Stuttgart).  While incorporating the
best ideas and technologies from these earlier implementations, new
designs and continued research have evolved to make Open MPI a truly
next-generation MPI-2 implementation.

Based on a high-performance component architecture, Open MPI supports
dynamic loading of plug-ins for flexible run-time configuration of key
functionality.  Network plug-ins include: shared memory, Ethernet,
Infiniband, and Myrinet; native job launch plug-ins include: rsh/ssh,
SLURM, PBS/Torque, BProc, and Xgrid.

“Multiple network plug-ins can be loaded and used simultaneously,” said
Andrew Lumsdaine, a co-principal investigator on the Open MPI project
and director of the Open Systems Lab, part of Pervasive Technology Labs
at Indiana University. “An application using Open MPI can therefore
use any combination of supported network hardware, and it can use
different hardware from run to run without ever having to be
re-compiled.”

The flexibility provided by multiple network plug-ins also allows Open
MPI to support network bonding, simultaneously using multiple network
links to send messages between processes.

The Open MPI architecture provides an ideal platform for active
involvement by the HPC community. Third party plug-ins can be
incorporated into existing Open MPI installations, enabling even legacy
applications to run with renewed functionality.  For example, vendors
can distribute enhancements and performance improvements in binary
form.  Researchers can develop new parallel algorithms and message
passing techniques as plug-ins, thereby leveraging the full
infrastructure of a production-quality MPI implementation.

Open MPI was made possible with significant funding from the National
Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing
program.

For more information about Open MPI and to download version 1.0, please
visit the Open MPI web site: http://www.open-mpi.org/

--
{+} Jeff Squyres
{+} The Open MPI Project
{+} http://www.open-mpi.org/