There are several parallel run modes including PVM, MPICH and several vendor specific MPI versions available on some platforms.

PVM stands for Parallel Virtual Machine; MPI stands for Message Passing Interface. Both are simply libraries which allow the flow solver processes to communicate with each other. PVM is an open source library implemented at Oakridge National Labs and only works over standard TCP/IP networks. MPICH is an open source version of MPI, implemented at Argonne National Labs, that allows communication over standard TCP/IP networks, as well as through shared memory. Proprietary, vendor specific versions of MPI are available on some platforms (32 bit Linux, 64 bit Linux, HPUX and IRIX) and support a wider array of high speed network devices, as well as Shared Memory communication.

General information on setting up a parallel run and advice on obtaining optimal parallel performance is available. For details, see Introduction .

Individual users may need to be configured to run in parallel.