[MPICH] Stopping processors?

[Michaela Heyer]

Hi,
I'm hoping someone can help me with this...
Essentially I'm looking for a way to tell one or more processors to stop 
whatever they are currently doing and move on to something else. The 
situation is as follows: Let's say we have n processors all working on 
different algorithms. I only really need the result of one of these 
algorithms so whichever processor finishes first should tell all the other 
ones to stop so they can all move on to the next problem. It's a bit like a 
race...and speed is vital! (That's why I can't really wait for all processors 
to finish their algorithms)
At the moment I'm using MPI_Abort() to shutdown the whole process. This works 
fine and does exactly what I need but the problem is that it is very very 
slow as it shuts down and restarts all the processors. So what I'm looking 
for is something like a "milder" version of MPI_Abort() i.e. stop everything 
but don't shutdown the processors.
I have been looking but can't find anything sutitable so I'm starting to think 
that maybe it's impossible? It would be great if you could prove me wrong :-)
Thanks,
Michaela