OpenMP and MPI

Beside the support for parallelism in .NET’s managed code environment and some support in the Java World, two powerful frameworks exist to support parallel programming in an explicit manner: MPI (Massage Passing Interface) and OpenMP. Both can be used with C/C++ and FORTRAN but with a different focus. OpenMP is fine in a shared memory scenario. It is a strongly coupled approach. MPI fits better into a distributed memory environment, in a loosely coupled scenario. It is probably not exact to say that both frameworks are strictly explicit. In case of OpenMP, the invocation of OpenMP statements is explicit and up to the developer, but the synchronization is implicit and organized by the framework. Of course, a hybrid approach of both frameworks is feasible and used for bigger solutions. I’m gonna publish more on both, OpenMP and MPI. It’s a pretty fascinating topic.