MP: The Multi Protocol
a protocol for the efficient exchange of mathematical data
Contents
Introduction to MP
The Multi Project is an ongoing research effort at Kent State University
aimed at providing a framework for distributed scientific computing. An
integral part of this framework is the Multi Protocol (MP) which is
designed to support efficient communication of mathematical data between
scientifically-oriented software packages. MP exchanges data in the form
of linearized annotated syntax trees. Syntax trees provide a simple,
flexible and application-independent way to represent and exchange data, and
annotations provide a powerful and generic expressive facility for
transmitting additional information. At a level above the data exchange
protocol, dictionaries provide definitions for operators, symbolic constants,
and annotations.
Binary encodings are used for efficiency. Commonly used values
and blocks of homogeneous data are further optimized. The protocol is
independent of the underlying communication paradigm and can support
parallel computation, distributed problem solving environments, and the
coupling of tools for specific applications.
MP-Related Papers
The following papers are available for downloading.
Getting the MP Library
The MP library is originally implemented in C. Later an OO
re-design/implementation was done in Java.