Newsgroups: comp.parallel.mpi
From: Nick Nevin <nevin@osc.edu>
Subject: LAM 6.1 release
Organization: Ohio Supercomputer Center
Date: 27 Nov 1996 15:05:14 -0500
Message-ID: <vn2682r718l.fsf@alex.osc.edu>


Ohio Supercomputer Center has released LAM 6.1, a complete
implementation of version 1.1 of the Message Passing Interface (MPI)
standard.

Major new features in LAM 6.1 include:

	o multi-protocol communication
	o dynamic process management
	o improved standard IO redirection


In multi-protocol communication MPI processes that reside on the same
machine communicate via shared memory and MPI processes that reside on
different machines communicate via TCP/IP.  This is now the factory
supplied behaviour of LAM/MPI "client-to-client" communication, enabled
by the -c2c option of mpirun(1).

A basic shared memory communication path, based on System V IPC, is
available for all supported machines.  In addition, some machines offer
faster alternatives for either the shared memory or the shared memory
locks, or both.

LAM 6.1 includes an implementation of the dynamic processes chapter of
the SC96 draft of the MPI-2 standard. Both parent/child spawning and
client/server rendezvous are supported.  It is possible to start
singleton MPI applications from the shell (without mpirun(1)) and then
start other processes via MPI_Spawn(2).  PVM programs with a similar
design should port easily to LAM/MPI.  [This is not the best way,
however, to attain a tightly coupled group of MPI processes.
See the MPI-2 document.]

LAM's dynamic node and fault tolerant features in conjunction
with MPI dynamic processes make a good environment for developing
load balancing and scheduling systems.

LAM 6.1 enables all processes, local and remote, to write to standard
output and error, with the data appearing on the terminal and node where
mpirun(1) was invoked.  This is accomplished via the scalable LAM
daemon.  Standard input is possible for local processes, who also have
their current working directory set to match the mpirun(1) invocation.
It is now possible to redirect an application's standard I/O by using
shell redirects with mpirun(1).

-=-

LAM 6.1 can be obtained from ftp://ftp.osc.edu/pub/lam or from
http://www.osc.edu/lam.html.  It is supported on the following platforms:

	o DEC, OSF/1 V4.0
	o HP, HP-UX 10.01 
	o IBM, AIX v3r2
	o Intelx86, Linux 2.0.24
	o SGI, IRIX 6.2
	o Sun, Solaris 5.4, 5.5


-=-
Nick Nevin				nevin@osc.edu
Ohio Supercomputer Center		http://www.osc.edu/lam.html

