HP XC System 2.x Software manual Using HP-MPI, Overview

8

Using HP-MPI

This chapter describes how to use HP-MPI in the HP XC environment. The main focus of this chapter is to help you to quickly get started using HP-MPI on an HP XC system. In this chapter, the basics of getting started are demonstrated. The semantics of building and running

asimple MPI program are described for single-host and multiple-host systems. In addition, you are shown how to configure your environment before running your program. You will also become familiar with the file structure in the HP-MPI directory.

This chapter discusses the following topics:

•An overview of HP-MPI (Section 8.1)

•HP-MPI Directory Structure (Section 8.2)

•Compiling and running programs (Section 8.3)

•System Interconnect Support (Section 8.4)

•Support for 32–bit builds on the XC4000 system (Section 8.5)

•Truncated messages (Section 8.6)

•Exclusive Locks (Section 8.7)

•Options for the mpirun command (Section 8.8)

•HP-MPI Environment Variables (Section 8.9)

•MPICH object compatibility (Section 8.10)

8.1Overview

HP-MPI is a high-performance implementation of the Message Passing Interface standard. HP-MPI complies fully with the MPI-1.2 standard and provides full MPI-2 functionality. HP-MPI provides an application programming interface and software libraries to support parallel, message-passing applications that are efficient, portable, and flexible. HP MPI is available as both archive and shared libraries.

Communication between MPI processes within an application is handled through the abstract device interface of HP-MPI. HP-MPI provides efficient support of different system interconnect hardware. You can use only one type of system interconnect at a time on an HP XC system, even though the library has support for multiple types of system interconnects.

HP-MPI Version 2.1 is included in this release of HP XC. HP-MPI 2.1 is the fully functional implementation of the HP Message Passing Interface standard for the HP XC system.

HP-MPI is available as both archive and shared libraries. Use of shared libraries is recommended. In order to use shared libraries, HP-MPI must be installed on all machines in the same directory or accessible through NFS mount. HP-MPI strives to be compiler neutral. HP-MPI 2.1 for HP XC systems was tested with the Intel, Portland, and GNU compilers.

HP-MPI 2.1 for HP XC is supported on HP XC4000 and HP XC6000 clusters, and includes support for the following system interconnects:

•HP XC4000 Clusters — Myrinet, Gigabit Ethernet, InfiniBand

•HP XC6000 Clusters — Quadrics Elan4, Gigabit Ethernet,

For complete details about using HP-MPI, refer to the HP-MPI documentation, which is included with your HP XC system documentation. For the latest information about using

Using HP-MPI 8-1