ParaStation MPI is an integrated cluster management and communication solution. It combines unique features only found in ParaStation MPI with common techniques, widely used in high performance computing, to deliver an integrated, easy to use and reliable compute cluster environment.

The version 5 of ParaStation MPI supports various communication technologies as interconnect network. It comes with an optimized communication protocol for Ethernet that enables Gigabit Ethernet to play a new role in the market of high throughput, low latency communication. Beside InfiniBand and Myrinet, it also supports the upcoming 10G Ethernet networks.

Like previous versions, ParaStation MPI includes an integrated cluster administration and management environment. Using communicating daemon processes on each cluster node, an effective resource management and single point of administration is implemented. This results in a single system image view of the cluster.

From the user's point of view this cluster management leads to an easier and more effective usage of the cluster. Important features like load balancing, job control and input/output management, common in classical supercomputers, but rarely found in compute clusters, are implemented by ParaStation MPI thus being now also available on clusters.