Layout-Agnostic MPI Abstraction for Distributed Computing in Modern C++

Abstract:

Message Passing Interface (MPI) has been a well-established technology in the domain of distributed high-performance computing for several decades. However, one of its greatest drawbacks is a rather ancient pure-C interface. It lacks many useful features of modern languages (namely C++), like basic type-checking or support for generic code design. In this paper, we propose a novel abstraction for MPI, which we implemented as an extension of the C++ Noarr library. It follows Noarr paradigms (first-class layout and traversal abstraction) and offers layout-agnostic design of MPI applications. We also implemented a layout-agnostic distributed GEMM kernel as a case study to demonstrate the usability and syntax of the proposed abstraction. We show that the abstraction achieves performance comparable to the state-of-the-art MPI C++ bindings while allowing for a more flexible design of distributed applications.

BibTeX:

@inproceedings{klepl_layoutagnostic_2026,
    title = {{Layout-Agnostic MPI Abstraction for Distributed Computing in Modern C++}},
    author = {Klepl, Jiří and Kruliš, Martin and Brabec, Matyáš},
    year = {2026},
    booktitle = {{Recent Advances in the Message Passing Interface}},
    editor = {Schuchart, Joseph and Bouteiller, Aurelien and Hunold, Sascha and Jaeger, Julien and Niethammer, Christoph and Smith, Brian},
    publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
    location = {Charlotte, NC, USA},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-07194-1_3},
    isbn = {978-3-032-07194-1},
    pages = {36--53},
    url = {https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-07194-1_3},
}

Proceedings paper