The emergence of the MPI message passing standard for parallel computing

Abstract MPI has been widely adopted as the message passing interface of choice in parallel computing environments. This paper examines how MPI grew out of the requirements of the scientific research community through a broad-based consultative process. The importance of MPI in providing a portable platform upon which to build higher level parallel software, such as numerical software libraries, is discussed. The development of MPI is contrasted with other similar standardization efforts, such as those of the Parallel Computing Forum and the HPF Forum. MPI is also compared with the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) system. Some general lessons learned from the MPI specification process are presented.

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