Outline of an MPI Program
The basic outline of an MPI program follows these general steps:
- Initialize communications
- Communicate to share data between processes
- Exit in a "clean" fashion from the message-passing system when done communicating
A programmer new to MPI can usually make do with only six functions. These functions, illustrated and discussed in our sample program, are:
Initialize communications
- MPI_INIT
- initializes the MPI environment
- MPI_COMM_SIZE
- returns the number of processes
- MPI_COMM_RANK
- returns this process's number (rank)
Communicate to share data between processes
- MPI_SEND
- sends a message
- MPI_RECV
- receives a message
Exit from the message-passing system
- MPI_FINALIZE
- leave the MPI environment