Subject: Parallel programming: mpich vs pvm?

From: Reinaldo Pis Diez <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 09:03:33 -0300

Hi netters,

		AFAIK there are two major, freely available libraries/tools to do 
parallel calculations, mpich and pvm (let me know if I miss something). My 
questions are: Which is the best in terms of performance? Which is the best 
to learn parallel programming for a guy who knows fortran and C?
		Thanks in advance.
		Regards,

								Reinaldo

---

From: Marcel Swart <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 17:41:59 +0100

>	Hi netters,
>
>		AFAIK there are two major, freely available 
>libraries/tools to do parallel calculations, mpich and pvm (let me 
>know if I miss something). My questions are: Which is the best in 
>terms of performance? Which is the best to learn parallel 
>programming for a guy who knows fortran and C?

In fact, you are wrong, there is even a third: LAM-MPI, and it is 
preferred over the other two.
First of all, because MPI is faster and much easier to learn and use than PVM;
second, because LAM-MPI is more stable (and faster) than MPICH.

It can be found at:
http://www.mpi.nd.edu/lam/

Marcel.

---

From: Konrad Hinsen <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Dec 2001 17:56:31 +0100

Reinaldo Pis Diez <[email-masked]> writes:

> terms of performance? Which is the best to learn parallel programming
> for a guy who knows fortran and C?

Another free MPI implementation is LAM. MPICH and LAM both implement
MPI interface, either one will for for learning, and in most
circumstances there shouldn't be significant performance differences.

As for the choice between PVM and either MPI, I'd go for MPI. Both PVM
and MPI follow the same basic approach (message passing), and MPI is
an industry standard, whereas PVM is not.

However, there is a real alternative worth looking at, the BSP model,
for which there are two implementations, BSPlib from Oxford and PUB
> from Paderborn. BSP (which stands for Bulk Synchronous Parallel) is a
higher-level abstraction than the message-passing model which is the
basis of MPI and PVM. It is much simpler to use and especially to
debug (deadlocks are impossible, for example), and its long-time users
also claim that it permits better communications optimization within
the BSP library. See www.bsp-worldwide.org for more information about
BSP.
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