language: en

Experience with MPI: 'Converting pvmmake to mpimake under LAM' and 'MPI and Parallel Genetic Programming'

Judith Ellen Devaney
NIST
jdevaney@nist.gov June 1995

Abstract This looks at the issues which arose in porting the pvmmake utility from PVM to MPI. Pvmmake is a PVM application which allows a user to send files, execute commands, and receive results from a single machine on any machine in the virtual machine. Its actions are controlled by the contents of a configuration file. Its most common use is to enable management of the development of a parallel program in a heterogeneous environment. A utility with the same features, mpimake, was coded up to run under LAM. Genetic programming is an algorithm which evolves an algorithm in the form of a program to solve your input problem. The implementation under MPI requires the transfer of dynamic data structures such as lists and trees. This paper discusses the match between the requirements of this algorithm and the datatype feature in MPI. A new library, MPI DataStruct is being developed which can transfer dynamic data structures, created with pointers, without intervention by the user.