From: Anders Jorgensen <ajorg@lanl.gov>
Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
Subject: Re: pvm vs. mpi
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 15:22:51 -0600
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Message-Id: <37374E2B.9CBD6C79@lanl.gov>
References: <3736D96A.41C6@physik.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Reply-To: anders.jorgensen.1998@alum.bu.edu
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Xref: ukc comp.parallel.pvm:8362


Juergen,
	I recently had to make this choice, and here are my reasons for using
PVM.

1) PVM can operate across multiple architectures, automatically
converting data format when sending between different architectures.

2) PVM is fault tolerant. If a node goes down, or a job dies, the PVM
system will detect it, and notify your program.

3) The PVM instruction set looked a heck of a lot simpler to me (No
flames please :-).

These three reasons were based on me running PVM across a cluster of
about 120 workstations scattered across several subnets with more or
less reliable interconnections. In addition, most of these machines (all
but one actually :-) don't belong to me, so I have no control over when
they are rebooted, go down, etc. If you intend to run parallel programs
on a massively parallel computer like the origin 2000, you may want to
consider MPI instead.
                             ----anders

Juergen Hoffmann wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> on one of the mpi (lam) homepages there is a list of
> "TOP 10 reasons why one should use mpi instead of pvm".
> Now this list is on the MPI Homepage and of course doesn't
> state anything about why one should use pvm instead of mpi.
> 
> I am currently trying to decide which system to use and ask you
> to give me arguments for pvm. I am a newbie in this area and
> quite helpless at the moment.
> But I surely only want to read the detailed documentation of one system.
> 
> Thanks for your help, Juergen
> 
> --
> Dipl.-Phys. Jürgen Hoffmann
> Institut für Angewandte Physik
> Universität Karlsruhe
> D-76128 Karlsruhe
> Tel.: +49-721-608-7478   Fax: +49-721-607593
> email: juergen.hoffmann@physik.uni-karlsruhe.de