Re: [boost] [Review Request] Message Passing Interface (MPI) Library

From: Doug Gregor (dgregor_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-06-29 17:30:41

On Jun 29, 2006, at 5:00 PM, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
> Is there a consideration of using asio to implement the actual MPI
> standard, so that the candidate Boost.MPI will also implement the MPI
> standard in case there aren't any available MPI implementations for
> the platform? I'm thinking if asio will work on many different
> platforms (maybe even embedded devices), then maybe Boost.MPI can have
> a canned MPI implementation that comes along with it?

I, personally, am not at all interested in implementing the MPI  
standard. There are high-quality, high-performance, portable  
implementations available already (<shameless plug>Open MPI, for  
instance</shameless plug>). Building MPI on top of asio would require  
a *huge* investment, and we would not have a chance at beating  
existing MPI implementations in either portability or performance.  
No, it's better that we just provide the best C++ interface we can to  
the C library.

That said, we can still try to *influence* MPI implementations,  
especially where there is a poor match between what C++ needs and  
what the C MPI bindings provide. For instance, MPI is very poor at  
receiving messages of unknown length. We could improve our  
implementation of the C++ bindings significantly if that issue could  
be addressed at a lower level.

        Doug