Extending Message Passing Interface Windows to Storage

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extension to the Message Passing Interface (MPI) that allows applications to use storage as a target for one-sided communication, integrating seamlessly with existing MPI implementations.

Contribution

It presents a novel MPI extension supporting storage-based windows, enabling transparent, low-overhead access to storage for MPI applications.

Findings

Potentially useful for diverse use-cases

Demonstrates low-overhead performance

Supports simultaneous storage and memory windows

Abstract

This work presents an extension to MPI supporting the one-sided communication model and window allocations in storage. Our design transparently integrates with the current MPI implementations, enabling applications to target MPI windows in storage, memory or both simultaneously, without major modifications. Initial performance results demonstrate that the presented MPI window extension could potentially be helpful for a wide-range of use-cases and with low-overhead.