2.7. Processes

An MPI program consists of autonomous processes, executing their own code, in a MIMD style. The codes executed by each process need not be identical. The processes communicate via calls to MPI communication primitives. Typically, each process executes in its own address space, although shared-memory implementations of MPI are possible.

This document specifies the behavior of a parallel program assuming that only MPI calls are used. The interaction of an MPI program with other possible means of communication, I/O, and process management is not specified. Unless otherwise stated in the specification of the standard, MPI places no requirements on the result of its interaction with external mechanisms that provide similar or equivalent functionality. This includes, but is not limited to, interactions with external mechanisms for process control, shared and remote memory access, file system access and control, interprocess communication, process signaling, and terminal I/O. High quality implementations should strive to make the results of such interactions intuitive to users, and attempt to document restrictions where deemed necessary.

[] Advice to implementors.

Implementations that support such additional mechanisms for functionality supported within MPI are expected to document how these interact with MPI. ( End of advice to implementors.)
The interaction of MPI and threads is defined in Section MPI and Threads .