MPIT - Communication/computation paradigm for networks of SMP workstations

Abstract

A need for a more efficient programming paradigm has been prompted by the introduction of networks of symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) workstations. A new programming paradigm for networks of SMP workstations is presented in this paper. The paradigm called MPIT integrates Message Passing Interface (MPI) and POSIX threads. The MPIT paradigm utilizes MPI for communication among the workstations, and uses threads to process the data within a workstation. The communication among the workstations is handled by a dedicated communication thread that runs on each workstation. The communication among the threads is handled through the shared memory. A number of theoretical and practical benefits of the MPIT paradigm are identified, such as communication/computation overlap, increased resource utilization and performance.