Fortran 90 and BeoMPI

James Cownie jcownie at etnus.com
Wed Mar 14 02:14:10 PST 2001


Newt wrote :-

> The point of the compiler wrappers that some MPI vendors ship is usually
> one of:
> 
> 	1. hide the rat's nest of little libraries from the end user
> 
> 	2. maintain compatibility with an earlier MPI that (see 1)
> 
> These reasons leave a bad taste in my mouth. You should be able to treat
> MPI like any other library.

I think you missed the main reason that the MPICH folks, at least,
implemented wrappers for the compilers which is :-

0. Give a consistent command for compiling MPI codes no matter which
   platform you are currently working on.

There is a class of people (particularly those at the "National Labs")
who have accounts on many different machines, and support code on lots
of them. To these people having a common way of asking to compile
an MPI code is a big win. For most of us, who only have one machine to
worry about, this is less important, of course.

-- Jim 

James Cownie	<jcownie at etnus.com>
Etnus, LLC.     +44 117 9071438
http://www.etnus.com




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