[mpich2-dev] is there a gforker equivalent to the Windows mpich2?

[Carl Christensen]

Hi, I work on the BOINC volunteer/distributed computing platform (as seen on 
SETI at home & IBM World Community Grid :-).  We are trying to make it 
'mpich2-compatible' for MPI-enabled science apps to run locally on volunteer 
host machines.

So far it has been good using the gforker process management on Linux & Mac for 
running locally, i.e. we just need to send out mpiexec & hydra_pmi_proxy.  But 
it seems there's no such local, non-service/daemon option on Windows.  This 
would make our projects a little tricky on Windows, as volunteers on science 
projects would need the installation .msi & smpd service running etc, before 
attaching to our projects.  But the nature of our "business" is volunteers get a 
URL of a project to try and connect/attach to it assuming that the applications 
are "self-contained".

Ideally we would like to just run an mpiexec (built a la the gforker/hydra which 
is working for us locally) on Windows, or possibly distribute an smpd that would 
just run locally in the background for the session (and not require a Windows 
service installation etc).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.