Message Envelope



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Message Envelope

 

In addition to data, messages carry information that is used to distinguish and selectively receive them. This information consists of a fixed number of fields, which we collectively call the message envelope. These fields are message envelope source, destination, tag, and communicator.

sourcedestinationtagcommunicator The message source is implicitly determined by the identity of the message source message sender. The other fields are specified by arguments in the send operation.

The comm argument specifies the communicator used for communicator the send operation. The communicator is a local object that represents a communication domain. A communication domain is a communication domain global, distributed structure that allows processes in a group groupprocess group to communicate with each other, or to communicate with processes in another group. A communication domain of the first type (communication within a group) is represented by an intracommunicator, whereas a communication domain of the second type intracommunicator (communication between groups) is represented by an intercommunicator. intercommunicator Processes in a group are ordered, and are identified by their integer rank. rankprocess rank Processes may participate in several communication domains; distinct communication domains may have partially or even completely overlapping groups of processes. Each communication domain supports a disjoint stream of communications. Thus, a process may be able to communicate with another process via two distinct communication domains, using two distinct communicators. The same process may be identified by a different rank in the two domains; and communications in the two domains do not interfere. MPI applications begin with a default communication domain that includes all processes (of this parallel job); the default communicator MPI_COMM_WORLD represents this communication domain. MPI_COMM_WORLD Communicators are explained further in Chapter gif.

The message destination is specified by the dest destinationmessage destination argument. The range of valid values for dest is 0,...,n-1, where n is the number of processes in the group. This range includes the rank of the sender: if comm is an intracommunicator, then a process may send a message to itself. If the communicator is an intercommunicator, then destinations are identified by their rank in the remote group.

The integer-valued message tag is specified by the tag argument. tagmessage tag This integer can be used by the application to distinguish messages. The range of valid tag values is 0,...,UB, where the value of UB is implementation dependent. It is found by querying the value of the attribute MPI_TAG_UB, as MPI_TAG_UB described in Chapter gif. MPI requires that UB be no less than 32767.


next up previous contents
Next: Comments on Send Up: Blocking Send and Previous: Send Buffer and



Jack Dongarra
Fri Sep 1 06:16:55 EDT 1995