MPI and PETSc for Python

Abstract

This work reports our attempts to facilitate the access to high-performance parallel computing resources within a Python programming environment. The outcome of this effort are two open source and public domain packages, MPIforPython (known in short as mpi4py) and PetscForPython (known in short as petsc4py). MPIforPython, is an open-source software project that provides bindings of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard for the Python programming language and targets the development of parallel application codes in Python. Its facilities allow parallel Python programs to easily exploit multiple processors. MPIforPython employs any back-end MPI implementation, thus being immediately available on any parallel environment providing access to any MPI library. PetscForPython is an open-source software project that provides access to the Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation (PETSc) libraries within the Python programming language. Its facilities allow sequential and parallel Python applications to exploit state of the art algorithms and data structures readily available in PETSc.