Abstract: With the continuous development of high-performance computing, the scale of the system increases constantly, and the number of nodes and processor cores in the system has expanded to a new level. Under the condition of hyperscale systems, the startup time of parallel applications becomes an important factor, which limits the system’s operating efficiency and reduces the ease of use. The process management interface is used to deploy a communication channel for the process during the parallel application startup phase for subsequent communication of the process. In exascale systems, the traditional process management interface cannot quickly obtain communication information at the startup phase, resulting in long startup time and the reduced system performance. We first introduce the role of the process management interface in the parallel program startup process, focus on the process management interface PMIx for exascale systems, compare and discuss the role of PMIx in improving the startup of large-scale parallel programs, analyze the optimization of PMIx in improving system performance, and discuss future development directions.

Key words: high-performance computing, process management interface, process communication