About This Manual
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## About This Manual

This publication documents the SGI implementation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) supported on Linux systems and SGI MIPS based systems running IRIX release 6.5 or later. MPI consists of a library, a profiling library, and commands that support the MPI interface. MPI is a component of the SGI Message Passing Toolkit (MPT). MPT is a software package that supports parallel programming on large systems and clusters of computer systems through a technique known as message passing. IRIX systems running MPI applications must also be running Array Services software version 3.1 or later.

## Related Publications and Other Sources

Material about MPI is available from a variety of sources. Some of these, particularly webpages, include pointers to other resources. Following is a grouped list of these sources:

The MPI standard:

- As a technical report: University of Tennessee report (reference [24] from Using MPI: Portable Parallel Programming with the Message-Passing Interface, by Gropp, Lusk, and Skjellum).

- As online PostScript or hypertext on the Web:

  http://www.mpi-forum.org/

- As a journal article in the International Journal of Supercomputer Applications, volume 8, number 3/4, 1994. See also International Journal of Supercomputer Applications, volume 12, number 1/4, pages 1 to 299, 1998.

Book: Using MPI: Portable Parallel Programming with the Message-Passing Interface, by Gropp, Lusk, and Skjellum, publication TPD-0011.

Newsgroup: `comp.parallel.mpi`

## Conventions

The following conventions are used throughout this document:

Convention |  | Meaning
`command` |  | This fixed-space font denotes literal items such as commands, files, routines, path names, signals, messages, and programming language structures.
`manpage`(x) |  | Man page section identifiers appear in parentheses after man page names.
variable |  | Italic typeface denotes variable entries and words or concepts being defined.
`user input` |  | This bold, fixed-space font denotes literal items that the user enters in interactive sessions. (Output is shown in nonbold, fixed-space font.)
[ ] |  | Brackets enclose optional portions of a command or directive line.
... |  | Ellipses indicate that a preceding element can be repeated.

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New Features in This Manual |  | Chapter 1. Introduction