Using MPI: Portable Parallel Programming with the Message-passing Interface

The parallel programming community recently organized an effort to standardize the communication subroutine libraries used for programming on massively parallel computers such as the Connection Machine and Cray's new T3D, as well as networks of workstations. The standard they developed, Message-Passing Interface (MPI), not only unifies within a common framework programs written in a variety of existing (and currently incompatible) parallel languages but allows for future portability of programs between machines. Three of the authors of MPI have teamed up here to present a tutorial on how to use MPI to write parallel programs, particularly for large-scale applications.