MPICH ABI Compatibility Initiative

With an announcement at SC13, the producers of several notable MPICH-derived MPI implementations have begun a collaboration with the explicit goal of maintaining ABI compatibility between their implementations. The collaborators and package release dates include:

  • MPICH v3.1 (Released Feburary 2014)
  • Intel® MPI Library v5.0 (Released June 2014)
  • Cray MPT v7.0.0 (Released June 2014)
  • MVAPICH2 2.0 (Release June 2014)
  • Parastation MPI 5.1.7-1 (Released December 2016)
  • RIKEN MPI 1.0 (Released August 2016)

ABI, or application binary interface, is the low-level interface between two program modules. An ABI determines such details as how functions are called and the size, layout and alignment of datatypes. With ABI compatibility, programs conform to the same set of runtime conventions.

The primary aim of the initiative is for all parties to agree on a schedule for necessary ABI changes, leading to a more stable release cycle and fewer surprises for developers. This project is not limited to just MPICH-derived implementations. Other collaborators are welcome to join and participate in the initiative for the benefit of users, application developers and system administrators alike.

Following a future announcement, we intend to publicly display test results demonstrating compatibility across libraries and platforms.

For more information about this initiative, contact Ken Raffenetti [email protected]

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