[Beowulf] mpich future

[rene]

Hi Rob,
> The MQbench project does look interesting.  Sort of a GUI version of
> SkaMPI?
It's something like the Pallas benchmark. But there aren't all Mpi Calls 
implemented yet.
But its nice to choose a bunch of nodes and then a second one in the same 
application and see the differences.
Its ordinary C mpi surrounded by a C++ Qt gui.

> If you write an MPI program, it should work with all MPI implementations
> (modulo missing MPI-2 features).  It will not necessarily cleanly link
> with any arbitrary library, in the same way that a C program will not
> dynamically link with any arbitrary C library.
>
> So there is always going to be an issue of recompilation; is that your
> second concern?
Yes it is.
Its probably possible to make software packages available for common linux 
distributions. But if you have to consider several mpi implementations extra,
that could be lot of packages.

I've you have written a major application like ls-dyna you can say:
Take these linux, these compiler and this mpi and you get our compiled 
version, but nobody will alter their cluster for an add-on program like a 
mpi-copy tool.
So the only choice is to go opensource.

But in some areas it is important that (small or large) companies make 
professional, supported software available. But this isn't easy with mpi.

Regards,
Rene