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Beginning in March 1995, the  MPI Forum began meeting to  
consider corrections and extensions to the original  MPI Standard  
document [5].  The first product of these deliberations was  
Version 1.1 of the  MPI specification, released in June of 1995 (see 
  
  
 http://www.mpi-forum.org for official  MPI document releases).  
  
Since that time, effort has been focused in five types of areas.  
 
 
1. Further corrections and clarifications for the  MPI-1.1 document.  
 
 
2. Additions to  MPI-1.1 that do not significantly change its types of  
  functionality (new datatype constructors, language interoperability, etc.).  
 
 
3. Completely new types of functionality (dynamic processes, one-sided  
  communication, parallel I/O, etc.) that are what everyone thinks of as  
  ``MPI-2 functionality.''  
  
 
 
4. Bindings for Fortran 90 and C++.  This document specifies C++ bindings  
  for both  MPI-1 and  MPI-2 functions, and extensions to the Fortran 77  
  binding of  MPI-1 and  MPI-2 to handle Fortran 90 issues.  
  
 
 
5. Discussions of areas in which the  MPI process and framework seem likely  
  to be useful, but where more discussion and experience are needed before  
  standardization (e.g. 0-copy semantics on shared-memory machines, real-time  
  specifications).  
 
Corrections and clarifications (items of type 1 in the above list)  
have been collected in Chapter Version 1.2 of MPI 
 of this document,  
``Version 1.2 of MPI.''  This chapter also contains the function for  
identifying the version number.  Additions to  MPI-1.1 (items of  
types 2, 3, and 4 in the above list) are in the remaining chapters, and  
constitute the specification for  MPI-2.    
  
This document specifies Version 2.0 of  MPI.  
  
Items of type 5 in the  
above list have been moved to a separate document, the ``MPI Journal  
of Development'' (JOD), and are not part of the  MPI-2 Standard.  
 
This structure makes it easy for users and implementors to understand  
what level of  MPI compliance a given implementation has:  
 
 
-  MPI-1 compliance will mean compliance with  MPI-1.2.  
  This is a useful level of compliance.  It means that the  
  implementation conforms to the clarifications of  MPI-1.1 function  
  behavior given in Chapter Version 1.2 of MPI 
.  Some  
  implementations may require changes to be  MPI-1 compliant.  
 
-  MPI-2 compliance will mean compliance with all of  MPI-2.  
 
- The  MPI Journal of Development is not part of the  MPI Standard.  
 
  
 
  
It is to be emphasized that forward compatibility is preserved.  That is,  
a valid  MPI-1.1 program is both a valid  MPI-1.2 program and a valid  
 MPI-2 program, and a valid  MPI-1.2 program is a valid  MPI-2  
program.   
  
 
  
 
  
 



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MPI-2.0 of July 18, 1997
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