I use OpenMPI on a variety of platforms: stand-alone servers running Solaris on sparc boxes and Linux (mostly CentOS) on AMD/Intel boxes, also Linux (again CentOS) on large clusters of AMD/Intel boxes. These platforms all have some version of the 1.3 OpenMPI stream. I recently requested an upgrade on all systems to 1.4.3 (for production work) and 1.5.1 (for experimentation). I'm getting a lot of push back from the SysAdmin folks claiming that OpenMPI is closely intertwined with the specific version of the operating system and/or other system software (i.e., Rocks on the clusters). I need to know if they are telling me the truth or if they're just making excuses to avoid the work. To state my question another way: Apparently each release of Linux and/or Rocks comes with some version of OpenMPI bundled in. Is it dangerous in some way to upgrade to a newer version of OpenMPI? Thanks in advance for any insight anyone can provide.
- Jeff
