MPI's basic datatypes are mostly drawn from the standard language-defined types from C and Fortran. However, MPI provides constructors for the following general datatypes, i.e., datatypes that can be built up from the basic ones.

Contiguous

Vector with "stride" of one

Vector

Fixed-size blocks separated by constant stride

Hvector

Like vector, but with stride in bytes

Indexed

Arrays of block sizes and indices (like scatterv/gatherv)

Hindexed

Like indexed, but with indices in bytes

Indexed_block

same as an Indexed block, but with uniform block sizes.

Hindexed_block

same as Indexed_block, but with displacement indices in bytes.

Struct

General mixed types (for C structs etc.)

The Contiguous, Vector and Indexed types are created using a function with the form MPI_Type_*. The rest of the general data types, including indexed_block, are created using functions with names in the form of MPI_Type_create_*.