Chapter 14. Additional MPI Features
This chapter is
an overview of a few of the more advanced features found in MPI. The
goal of this chapter is not to make you an expert on any of these
features but simply to make you aware that they exist. You should
come away with a basic understanding of what they are and how they
might be used. The four sections in this chapter describe additional
MPI features that provide greater control for some common parallel
programming tasks.
If you want more control when exchanging messages, the first section
describes MPI commands that provide non-blocking and bidirectional
communications. If you want to investigate other collective communication strategies,
the second section describes MPI commands for distributing data
across the cluster or collecting data from all the nodes in a
cluster. If you want to create custom communication groups, the third section
describes how it is done. If you want to group data to minimize communication overhead, the
last section describes two alternatives-packed data and
user-defined types.
While you may not need these features for simple programs, as your
projects become more ambitious, these features can make life easier.
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