Tech Glossary

What is MPI?

MPI (Message Passing Interface) is a communication protocol used to enable cooperation between different processes in a parallel computing application. MPI enables processes to send messages to each other and synchronize their activities to perform computations efficiently. There are several different implementations of MPI, such as OpenMPI, MPICH, and Microsoft MPI. These implementations offer similar functionality but may differ in performance and compatibility with different systems. MPI is primarily used in the scientific and engineering computing world to parallelize computations and optimize performance in large-scale systems. By using MPI, scientists and engineers can accelerate their computations and solve complex problems faster than with serial computation methods.