The results of the following graphs shows that the performance of
pvm_psend is very close to the native MPP routines,
while still maintaining portability and the ability to send
messages off the MPP (to another MPP or a workstation).
Note that in PVM 3.3, pvm_psend only works between machines
of the same data format. This restriction will be lifted in PVM 3.4.
The graphs also show that on MPP pvm_send is between 2X and 6X slower than pvm_psend. We are trying to understand and improve pvm_send on MPP, but for now pvm_psend is the clearly the routine of choice.
The following graphs are from a UT technical report
by Henri Casanova and Jack Dongarra titled
The Performance of PVM on Massively Parallel Processing Systems.
They used PVM 3.3.8 in their tests.