[mpich-discuss] Linux/Windows

[Jayesh Krishna]

Hi,
 There are couple of things to remember before running MPI programs across Linux and windows machines,

# MPICH2 currently does not support heterogeneous systems (eg: You cannot run your MPI program across 32-bit and 64-bit machines). However you can run your MPI program across windows and linux machines with the same underlying h/w arch.
# Currently the only process manager supported on windows is SMPD. So you will have to configure MPICH2 on unix to use SMPD as the process manager (./configure ... --with-pm=smpd).
# Make sure that you use the same communication channel on windows and linux (If you are using 1.3a2 the default communication channel on both unix and windows is nemesis. On unix you can explicitly configure MPICH2 to use nemesis or sock communication channel  by using --with-device option. eg: ./configure ... --with-device=ch3:nemesis  OR ./configure ... --with-device=ch3:sock . On windows you can select the communication channel at job launch time using the "-channel" option of mpiexec . eg: mpiexec -n 2 -channel nemesis MYMPIPGM.exe OR mpiexec -n 2 -channel sock MPIMPIPGM.exe).

 Once you have the same process manager (SMPD) and the same communication channel (Nemesis OR sock) on both unix and windows you can compile your application on both unix and windows (We recommend maintaining the same name for the executable on both unix and windows. You can either share the executables using a shared drive or have them available on a local drive - same path- on each host. See the "-path" option of mpiexec command on how to specify unix and windows paths for the executable) and launch your MPI job (Use the "-machinefile" option to specify the name of hosts - both unix and windows hosts . eg: "mpiexec -n 2 -channel nemesis -machinefile mf.txt MYMPIPGM" from a windows machine with the machinefile, mf.txt, containing both unix and windows hostnames ).

 Take a look at user docs (http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/documentation/index.php?s=docs) for the different options available for the mpiexec utility.
 Let us know if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Jayesh
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daye Liu" <rosemont at gmail.com>
To: mpich-discuss at mcs.anl.gov
Sent: Tuesday, June 8, 2010 12:38:26 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: [mpich-discuss] Linux/Windows

Sorry for this naive question, how to run MPICH2 program in a mixed
Linux and Windows network? We have a number of Windows PC and a number
of Linux PC.  Do they have to share a drive where the executable to be
placed? Which command to use to start the process? Thanks.

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