Looking for thoughts on PyMPI

[Konrad Hinsen]

On Apr 13, 2006, at 17:37, Carl J. Van Arsdall wrote:

> Hey, anyone use the PyMPI suite: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ 
> pympi/  ??
>
> I am an engineer doing research with MPI and thought I'd do some  
> digging
> to see if any scripting languages had adopted it yet.  I was just
> looking for general comments and reviews from the community on this
> project, thanks!

There is also PyPAR which is quite similar:
	http://datamining.anu.edu.au/~ole/pypar/

Both are high-level interfaces to MPI, i.e. they propose an MPI-like  
message passing interface with the main added value being  
communication of arbitrary Python objects.

There is also a more low-level MPI interface in my ScientificPython  
library:
	http://dirac.cnrs-orleans.fr/ScientificPython/ScientificPythonManual/
Scientific_27.html

It handles only strings and arrays, but with almost no overhead. Its  
strong point is its C interface, which makes it possible to write  
parallelized mixed C-Python code and to integrate parallelized C  
libraries into Python projects.

Finally, if you are looking for parallel programming in Python but  
not necessarily an MPI-like approach, consider my BSP interface:
	http://dirac.cnrs-orleans.fr/ScientificPython/BSP_Tutorial.pdf

This is what I personally consider the most convenient interface for  
parallel programming in Python. It is built on the BSP (Bulk  
Synchronous Processing) model that works at a higher level than  
message passing: the programmer does not have to worry about  
synchronization, which is a major source of hard-to-track-
down bugs.

Konrad.
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Konrad Hinsen
Laboratoire Léon Brillouin, CEA Saclay,
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
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Fax: +33-1 69 08 82 61
E-Mail: konrad.hinsen at cea.fr
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