Dynamic nodes in OpenMPI

Question

In MPI, is it possible to add new nodes after it is started? For example, I have 2 computers already running a parallel MPI application. I start another instance of this application on a third computer and add it to the existing communicator. All computers are in a local network.

Answer 1

No, it's not currently possible to add new nodes to a running MPI application. MPI is designed to know the total number of nodes when the program starts.

Work is being done (on MPI-3, for example) on handling nodes that go down. Maybe if you can add faulty nodes back, then you can add new ones, but that's the closest thing I can think of. See this answer for more info on approaches to MPI fault tolerance.