Performance evaluation of message passing libraries on IBM SP--2

IBM SP--2 has become a popular MPP for scientific community. Its programming environment includes several message passing libraries. In this paper, we analyse performance of communication operations in 3 libraries installed on SP--2, namely Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM), Message Passing Library (MPL), and Message Passing Interface (MPI). 1 Introduction A typical parallel application on a commercial distributed memory MPP is built on top of a message passing library. Most MPPs provide several libraries, which may differ in architecture, efficiency of implementation, or use of special hardware support. IBM SP--2 programming environment offers 3 message passing libraries: PVM, MPL, MPI. To choose the right library for its application, a user should understand their differences in performance of communication operations. In this paper, our aim is to compare the latest versions of PVM [1] -- version 3.3.10, MPL [2] -- version 01.02.01.00, and MPI [3] -- MPICH by Argonne National Laborator..