Newsgroups: comp.parallel.mpi,comp.parallel.pvm
From: : Christian Kuhtz <kuhtz@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: MPI or PVM
Organization: Netcom
Date: 25 Oct 1996 23:05:20 GMT
Message-ID: <54rh3g$2cc@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>

k3is@fundy.unbsj.ca (DA) wrote:
>Yan Xu (yanx@ifi.uio.no) wrote:
>
>: If I have to choose between PVM and MPI system, which one should I
>: choose and why? I have heared that the MPI system is better (quicker)
>: than PVM, is that so? Where can I find some references on this?
>
>PVM has one implementation.....yes I found it is slower than the 
implementation
>of MPI that I used to solve one parallel problem.

Studies published show that in practical applications PVM and MPI perform 
comparable.  The hardware platforms used were IBM SP-2 and Cray T3D.

However, as you state above, particular applications can benefit from the 
implementation differences.   MPI really is a standard for highly efficient 
message passing only, whereas PVM is literally the whole ball of wax for 
building a virtual machine with debugger integration etc etc.  A close 
evaluation of both concepts needs to be performed before a particular 
parallel application development is begun.  I'd recommend reading up on both 
subjects by looking at the respective webpages.  

PVM	:	http://www.epm.ornl.gov/pvm/
MPI	:	ftp://ftp.mcs.anl.gov/mpi

An addition you may want to try asking http://yahoo.com/ for additional 
references.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if I can help you out with anything else.

Regards,
Chris

-- 
Christian Kuhtz <kuhtz@ix.netcom.com>, office: ckuhtz@paranet.com
Network/UNIX Specialist for Paranet, Inc. http://www.paranet.com/
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