Re: [Boost-users] Does MPI use ASIO?

From: Andrew Holden (aholden_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-04-02 12:20:00

Hartmut Kaiser [hartmut.kaiser_at_[hidden]] wrote:
> 
> What I meant is to implement Asio on top of the (highly
> efficient) MPI transport layer. Asio currently supports the
> IP protocol only, where MPI gives you access to a whole bunch
> of different network implementations (Myrinet etc.). Do I
> misunderstand something? 
> 
> Regards Hartmut

ASIO provides low-level access to the network.  You can implement any
TCP/IP or UDP/IP protocol using ASIO.  You could, for example, write a
web browser or ftp client that uses ASIO for its network communications.
In fact, I seem to recall a library that does exactly that.

MPI is a protocol.  Specifically, it provides message passing for
distributed computing.  Because of MPI's structure, it is not possible
to implement an arbitrary protocol like HTTP or FTP using MPI.