MPI_Init(3) Manual Page

The MPI standard does not say what a program can do before an MPI_INIT or after an MPI_FINALIZE. In the MPICH implementation, you should do as little as possible. In particular, avoid anything that changes the external state of the program, such as opening files, reading standard input or writing to standard output.

MPICH by default set thread level to MPI_THREAD_SINGLE. This can be changed by setting MPIR_CVAR_DEFAULT_THREAD_LEVEL.

This routine must be called by one thread only. That thread is called the main thread and must be the thread that calls MPI_Finalize.

As of MPI-2, MPI_Init will accept NULL as input parameters. Doing so will impact the values stored in MPI_INFO_ENV.

The Fortran binding for MPI_Init has only the error return

All MPI routines in Fortran (except for 'MPI_WTIME' and 'MPI_WTICK') have an additional argument 'ierr' at the end of the argument list. 'ierr' is an integer and has the same meaning as the return value of the routine in C. In Fortran, MPI routines are subroutines, and are invoked with the 'call' statement.

All MPI objects (e.g., 'MPI_Datatype', 'MPI_Comm') are of type 'INTEGER' in Fortran.

All MPI routines (except 'MPI_Wtime' and 'MPI_Wtick') return an error value; C routines as the value of the function and Fortran routines in the last argument. Before the value is returned, the current MPI error handler is called. By default, this error handler aborts the MPI job. The error handler may be changed with 'MPI_Comm_set_errhandler' (for communicators), 'MPI_File_set_errhandler' (for files), and 'MPI_Win_set_errhandler' (for RMA windows). The MPI-1 routine 'MPI_Errhandler_set' may be used but its use is deprecated. The predefined error handler 'MPI_ERRORS_RETURN' may be used to cause error values to be returned. Note that MPI does not guarantee that an MPI program can continue past an error; however, MPI implementations will attempt to continue whenever possible.

MPI_Init_thread(3) MPI_Finalize(3)