MS-MPI V6.0 Beta announcement

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We are happy to announce today the Beta release of the newest version of Microsoft MPI (MS-MPI). MS-MPI v6 Beta is the pre-release version for the successor to HPC Pack 2012 R2 MS-MPI Redistributable Package (v5.0, released IN November 2014). You can download a copy of MS-MPI v6 Beta from the download center at MS-MPI v6 Beta 1 . For regular product updates please visit our HPC TEAM BLOG.  For beta release feedback please contact us at askmpi@microsoft.com

This Beta version of MS-MPI v6 includes the following features, improvements, and fixes:

  • Multi-job affinity support
    • -affinity_auto|-aa
    • Affinity option is added so mpiexec task can be assigned to a new/separate core that is not in use and avoid over subscribing of the cores.
    • This option works even without use of HPC PACK
    • MS-MPI v6 beta will work on HPC PACK 2012 R2 and any versions thereafter
    • To run two 4 core jobs on an 8 core machine, use as follows
      • Submit job as mpiexec –c 4 - aa –al sequential appname.exe

  • Support for MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE

    • Support for MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE mode on Windows Server 2012+ and Windows 8+ when calling the MPI_Init_thread initialization routine.
    • MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE enables multithreaded applications to use MS-MPI from any application thread (like OpenMP threads). 

  • New features from MPI 3.0 standard published by MPI FORUM

    • Support for MPI_Mprobe, MPI_Mrecv, MPI_Improbe and MPI_Imrecv
    • Support for MPI_COUNT, to allow large datatypes to be properly represented in MPI_STATUS structures.
    • Support for MPI_Type_create_hindexed_block
    • Link to the MPI 3.0 standards documentation https://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/mpi-3.0/mpi30-report.pdf

Important: This software is a pre-release version for evaluation purposes only, and it should not be used in a production environment. Features and behavior can change before the final release.

Note: The SDK components for MS-MPI (headers and libraries) ship separately from the redistributable package binary files. The SDK components are also available in this Beta release. To learn more about MS-MPI, see Microsoft MPI on MSDN or for detailed questions please send us an email to askmpi@microsoft.com

You can also find useful information, and ask your own questions, in the Windows HPC MPI Forum.