This section specifies the interaction between MPI-/ calls and threads. The section lists minimal requirements for thread compliant MPI-/ implementations and defines functions that can be used for initializing the thread environment. MPI-/ may be implemented in environments where threads are not supported or perform poorly. Therefore, it is not required that all MPI-/ implementations fulfill all the requirements specified in this section.
This section generally assumes a thread package similar to POSIX threads [11], but the syntax and semantics of thread calls are not specified here -- these are beyond the scope of this document.