An Application Program Interface (API) that may be used to explicitly direct multi-threaded, shared memory parallelism

Comprised of three primary API components:

• Compiler Directives
• Runtime Library Routines
• Environment Variables

Portable:

• The API is specified for C/C++ and Fortran
• Most major platforms have been implemented including Unix/Linux platforms and Windows NT

Standardized:

• Jointly defined and endorsed by a group of major computer hardware and software vendors
• Expected to become an ANSI standard later???

What does OpenMP stand for?

• Short version: Open Multi-Processing
• Long version: Open specifications for Multi-Processing via collaborative work between interested parties from the hardware and software industry, government and academia.