How do I configure Visual Studio for Intel MPI?

[dnesteruk]

I'm using Visual Studio 2013 and IncrediBuild 5.5 to build apps using Intel Parallel Studio. I've recently downloaded Intel MPI and found that it essentially has a compiler wrapper (mpiicpc) that I need to use to compile apps (and, correspondingly, run them with mpiexec).

My question is this: how do I configure Visual Studio 2013 so that mpiicpc is used instead of icpc for compilation?

Thanks.

[James_T_Intel]

This isn't quite the correct approach.  What you need to do is run mpiicpc -show on the command line.  This will give you the command line used when compiling/linking.  Use this to set matching Visual Studio* options.

[dnesteruk]

Wait, that doesn’t make much sense. mmiicpc -show gives me an ICL command with the paths for includes and libraries. So is that it? Is mpiicpc actually just a helper for an include/lib pair? Surely the same question applies to running the program, as we use mpiexec instead of just running the exe.

[James_T_Intel]

You're correct about the compiler.  It is simply a wrapper which recognizes some extra options.  All of them are eventually turned into a command direct to the compiler.  This allows different compilers to be used.

Now, mpirun/mpiexec is another story.  This is a launcher program which handles more than just starting the programs.  It also sets up a common communication environment across multiple nodes, setting a significant number of configuration options at runtime.  If you want to debug MPI applications in Visual Studio*, you'll need to get the Microsoft* HPC Pack Add-In.

[dnesteruk]

Where can I find documentation on using the HPC pack with Intel MPI? I kind of thought that HPC Pack was something that only worked with Intel MPI, and on server-grade OS, too.