Topic: MPI-2 Compliance
Date Received: June 7, 2006

In our initial conversion an application from OpenMP to MPI we chose to use MPI-2 spawn functions and discovered that our test application could not be run at any HPC centers. We later changed our design slightly and could run our test app on SGI Altix's and Origin's. A later change to the design has removed that particular MPI-2 function need; however, this experience has made it clear that MPI-2 is not available on the HPC systems and we don't know when next we will find a missing function.

A reading of the web pages describing the MPI installations at every HPC center we looked at either was lacking in any information about installed MPI versions or straight out said that an obsolete version of MPICH1 was installed, not even the last released version of MPICH1 which itself has been replaced by MPICH2.

BC Team Feedback
Reply Date:
September 28, 2006

The DoD HPCMP Baseline Configuration (BC) Team is establishing a policy (FY06-16) on message passing interface (MPI) compliance across the centers. The BC Team is also putting together a policy (FY06-07) on Common Web Documentation to help users with pertinent HPC information such as Getting Started Guides, User Guides and Documentation, Help Desk, Software Overview, Software Requests, Tutorials and Primers, Frequently Asked Questions, and so forth.

The BC Web site will include details on policies FY06-07 and FY06-16 in the very near future.