Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm,comp.parallel.mpi
From: mdesimon@etude.uwaterloo.ca (Mauricio De Simone)
Subject: Re: PVM vs. MPI
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 17:11:39 GMT
Message-ID: <Dovx3G.n8D@novice.uwaterloo.ca>

In article <4j6tp4$d03@ratatosk.uio.no>, pdahle@ulrik.uio.no (P}l Dahle) writes:
> 
> What makes PVM preferably to MPI and vice versa?
> 
> Any opinions you'd like to share with me?
> 
> 
> Paal.

MPI is a interface definition for a message pasing engine
and PVM is a message passing library. You could implement
MPI *using* PVM.

The functionality provided by both interfaces are quite similar,
but differ in (among other things) that MPI does not allow
dynamic spawing of processes. This can make MPI unusable 
for a particular implementations, so it greatly depend on the 
problem at hand.

In term of performance, one cannot compare the two, one could
however compare a *particular* implementation of MPI with PVM.

---
Mauricio De Simone B.
Dept. Electrical & Computer Eng. |
University of Waterloo           | mdesimon@etude.uwaterloo.ca
Waterloo, Ontario                | http://coulomb.uwaterloo.ca/~mdesimon
Canada, N2H 3G1                  | Voice: (519) 888-4567 x3804

