2.3 Install external libraries (optional)
If you have downloaded an HP-MPI or OpenMPI version of ADF you do not need to install any additional MPI libraries because these are provided by SCM.
If, however, for whatever reason you want to build ADF with a different MPI library then below you will find some information and web links we have gathered about major MPI implementations supported by ADF. Additional information about different MPI libraries, caveats and troubleshooting may be found in the section 4 of this document.
HP-MPI
Hewlett-Packard has MPI implementations for the most popular operating systems: x86- and ia64-based Linux, Windows, as well as for HP-UX. Full documentation about HP-MPI is available at the HP website. HP-MPI is distributed with (HP-MPI versions of) ADF and a complete HP-MPI directory tree is found in $ADFBIN/hpmpi. Using HP-MPI with ADF does not require any additional licenses. In addition to TCP/IP and shared memory supported by every MPI implementation, HP-MPI also supports (without recompilation) all well-known interconnects such as Infiniband and Myrinet. The best available interconnect is chosen automatically at run time and this can also be modified using mpirun command-line switches in the $ADFBIN/start script.
OpenMPI
OpenMPI is an open-source implementation of the MPI standard. You can get both the software and documentation from the OpenMPI website:
For some platforms, ADF comes bundled with OpenMPI so you do not have to install it separately. However, you do need to install OpenMPI if you are going to recompile ADF and if you want it to use a fast interconnect such as Infiniband or if you need to enable OpenMPI integration with the batch system on your cluster.
Intel MPI
Intel provides its own MPI implementation that is similar to OpenMPI in many ways. ADF supports Intel MPI at the configure script level on ia32-, i64- and ia64-based Linux platforms.
MPICH1
MPICH1 is a portable, though outdated, implementation of the MPI v1 standard. You can get both the software and documentation from the MPICH1 web site:
http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/mpich1/
Vendor-specific MPI implementations
Many hardware manufacturers, such as SGI, IBM, Sun and Cray, have their own MPI implementations that work only on their hardware and/or operating system. In this case, SCM provides an ADF version built with the appropriate MPI library but the run-time environment (RTE) is not distributed since you will most likely have the RTE already pre-installed on your machine. Please contact the machine vendor's support staff if this is not the case.
PVM
NOTE: SCM strongly discourages the use of PVM. It is not actively developed, it does not use modern fast interconnects and it is significantly slower than any modern MPI implementation. So it should only be used as the last resort when no other parallel option works.
If you are not familiar with PVM and need to install it yourself, we strongly suggest you have a look at the PVM documentation. PVM (including FAQ, User's Guide and the Tutorial) can be downloaded from:
http://www.netlib.org/pvm3/index.html
To use PVM you need to:
- install PVM (see PVM documentation)
- set two environment variables: PVM_ROOT and PVM_ARCH
- add $PVM_ROOT/bin/$PVM_ARCH and $PVM_ROOT/lib to your PATH
- make sure pvm can start the PVM daemon pvmd on all nodes of your system
See section 4 for more information about PVM troubleshooting
Note: you should use PVM_ARCH=MACOSX on the Macintosh OS X platform. If you choose something different you will certainly encounter difficulties.
