[[!meta  title="Message passing interface"]]

The [MPI][] framework allows separate processes in a parallel program
to communicate.  The [standards][] are maintained by the [MPI
Forum][forum].  There are several implementations, and the main ones
are [MPICH2][] and [Open MPI][].  I've used both and they are fairly
interchangeable.

There are also several [[Python]] bindings for MPI, but the most
popular seems to be [mpi4py][].

[MPI]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface
[standards]: http://www.mpi-forum.org/docs/
[forum]: http://www.mpi-forum.org/
[MPICH2]: http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/
[Open MPI]: http://www.open-mpi.org/
[mpi4py]: http://code.google.com/p/mpi4py/

[[!tag tags/linux]]