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Open MPI

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18 Sept 2026
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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  1. Open MPI
Open MPI
Message Passing Interface software library
Stable release5.0.111 / 25 August 2026 (25 August 2026)
Operating systemUnix, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD2
PlatformCross-platform
TypeLibrary
LicenseNew BSD License
Websitewww.open-mpi.org
Repositorygithub.com/open-mpi/ompi

Open MPI is a Message Passing Interface (MPI) project combining technologies and resources from several other projects (FT-MPI, LA-MPI, , and PACX-MPI). It is used by many including , which was the world's fastest supercomputer from June 2008 to November 2009, and , the fastest supercomputer from June 2011 to June 2012.

library
LAM/MPI
TOP500
supercomputers
Roadrunner
3
K computer
4
5

Not to be confused with OpenMP.

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Where Open MPI leads. Every connection below has a source: a link in this article, a shared Wikipedia category, or CirrusSearch text similarity. Articles already on your trail are left out.

Contents
  • (Top)
  • Overview
  • Code modules
  • Commercial implementations
  • Consortium
  • See also
  • References
  • External links
  • Recent changes
  • Rabbit hole
Contents
Contents9 sections
  • (Top)
  • Overview
  • Code modules
  • Commercial implementations
  • Consortium
  • See also
  • References
  • External links
  • Recent changes
  • Rabbit hole
Categories:
  • Concurrent programming libraries
  • Software using the BSD license

330 words · 7 references · revision 1375613392 · CC BY-SA 4.0

General
  • Recent changes
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This article
Reading time
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Topic
Computer Science
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Last edited
18 Sept 2026

Key concepts

  • LAM/MPI2
  • Message Passing Interface1
  • Library (computing)1
  • TOP5001
  • Supercomputer1
  • IBM Roadrunner1
  • K computer1
  • High-performance computing2
  • University of Tennessee1
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory1

The articles this one links to most, weighted towards the introduction.

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Overview

Open MPI represents the merger between three well-known MPI implementations:

  • FT-MPI from the University of Tennessee
  • LA-MPI from Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • LAM/MPI from Indiana University

with contributions from the PACX-MPI team at the University of Stuttgart. These four institutions compose the founding members of the Open MPI development team.

The Open MPI developers selected these MPI implementations as excelling in one or more areas. Open MPI aims to use the best ideas and technologies from the individual projects and create one world-class open-source MPI implementation that excels in all areas. The Open MPI project specifies several top-level goals:

  • to create a free, open source software, peer-reviewed, production-quality complete MPI-3.0 implementation
  • to provide extremely high, competitive performance (low latency or high bandwidth)
  • to involve the high-performance computing community directly with external development and feedback (vendors, 3rd party researchers, users, etc.)
  • to provide a stable platform for 3rd-party research and commercial development
  • to help prevent the "forking problem" common to other MPI projects6
  • to support a wide variety of high-performance computing platforms and environments

Code modules

The Open MPI code has 3 major code modules:

  • OMPI - MPI code
  • ORTE - the Open Run-Time Environment
  • OPAL - the Open Portable Access Layer

Commercial implementations

  • Sun HPC Cluster Tools - beginning with version 7, Sun switched to Open MPI
  • Bullx MPI—In 2010 Bull announced the release of bullx MPI, based on Open MPI7

Consortium

Memory hierarchy of a four-socket AMD Bulldozer server as detected by hwloc's lstopo tool

Open MPI development is performed within a consortium of many industrial and academic partners. The consortium also covers several other software projects such as the hwloc (Hardware Locality) library which takes care of discovering and modeling the topology of parallel platforms.

See also

  • Message Passing Interface
  • MPICH
  • Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM)

References

  1. 1"Release 5.0.11". 25 August 2026. Retrieved 12 September 2026.
  2. 2"FreshPorts -- net/Openmpi2: High Performance Message Passing Library".
  3. 3Jeff Squyres. "Open MPI: 10^15 Flops Can't Be Wrong" (PDF). Open MPI Project. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  4. 4"Programming on K computer" (PDF). Fujitsu. Retrieved 2012-01-17.
  5. 5"Open MPI powers 8 petaflops". Cisco Systems. Archived from the original on 2011-06-28. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  6. 6Preventing forking is a goal; how will you enforce that?
  7. 7Aurélie Negro. "Bull launches bullx supercomputer suite". Bull SAS. Archived from on 2014-04-21. Retrieved 2013-09-27.

External links

  • Open MPI Project Homepage
  • RCE01: Open MPI - RCE Podcast interview
the original
Created
17 Sept 2005
History
131 edits
88 contributors
No edits in the last 30 days
Last edited
18 Sept 2026

131 revisions in total · 88 contributors

  1. 18 Sept 2026, 22:09 UTCTemporary account§ Overview comprise -> compose. Parts compose wholes. Wholes comprise parts.−1diff
  2. 6 Apr 2026, 14:33 UTCValjeanRestored revision 1333130399 by ThanForIllegitimateAsThisDean (talk): Deceptive edit summary. One source was bogus and others hard to find, so unverifiable. Suspect LLM use.−1,025diff
  3. 6 Apr 2026, 14:27 UTCValjeanrevertedbogus source pointed to different article from 2010−308diff
  4. 11 Mar 2026, 13:09 UTCNeepn3rfrevertedRemoved promotional content and added refrences+1,333diff
  5. 15 Jan 2026, 22:18 UTCThanForIllegitimateAsThisDeanAdded template "Promotional".+35diff
  6. 10 Oct 2025, 08:34 UTCArtoria2e5§ Consortium hwloc~+12diff
  7. 4 Oct 2025, 08:08 UTCArtoria2e5§ Consortium pic+134diff
  8. 21 Feb 2024, 07:49 UTCMichielNfix+1diff

View full revision history

Created
17 Sept 2005
History
131 edits
88 contributors
No edits in the last 30 days
Last edited
18 Sept 2026

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