An Overview of Message Passing Environments

A majority of the MPP systems designed to date have been MIMD distributed memory systems. For almost all of these systems, message passing environments have provided the primary mechanism for programming multiprocessor applications. In this paper we provide an introduction to MPP systems in general. We then introduce current MPP message passing interfaces, by tracing their historical development over the last 10 years. In addition to their use within a single MPP architecture, we discuss the use of message passing systems to interconnect more loosely coupled processors in heterogeneous environments. Finally we review the development of "portability platforms" message passing systems that have been devised solely to allow portability of message passing programs between different systems. *Research supported in part by NSF Grand Challenges Applications Group grant ASC-9217394 and by NASA HPCC Group Grant NAG5-2218. † To appear in Parallel Computing, April 1994.