Description of exercises and examples

README.md

@@ -2,7 +2,39 @@
 
 This repository contains various exercises and examples on parallel programming with message passing interface (MPI).
 
-A working MPI installation is needed, please see individual exercise/example for detailed build instructions.
+A working MPI installation is needed for building the code. Simple cases can
+be built and run as:
+
+ - mpicc -o exe exercise.c ; mpirun -np xxx ./exe (C)
+ - mpif90 -o exe exercise.c ; mpirun -np xxx ./exe (Fortran)
+ - mpirun -np xxx python program.py (Python)
+
+where mpicc/mpif90/mpirun should be replaced by the correct commands for
+the particular computer platform. For more complex cases a Makefile is
+provided.
+
+## Exercises
+
+ - [Hello world](hello-world) Simplest possible MPI program (C, Fortran and 
+   Python versions). Level: *basic*
+ - [Message exchange](message-exchange) Simple point-to-point communication 
+   (C, Fortran and Python versions). Level: *basic*
+ - [Message chain](message-chain) Point-to-point communication in one
+   dimensional aperiodic chain. (C, Fortran and Python versions). 
+   Level: *intermediate*
+ - [Collective communciation](collectives) Basic collective communication
+   patterns (C, Fortran and Python versions). Level: *basic/intermediate*
+ - [Parallel I/O](parallel-io) Simple parallel I/O using Posix calls and 
+   MPI I/O (C and Fortran versions). Level: *basic/intermediate*
+ - [User defined datatypes](datatypes) Communication of non-uniform data using
+   user defined datatypes (C, Fortran and Python versions). 
+   Level: *intermediate/advanced*
+
+## Examples
+ - [Heat equation](heat-equation) A two dimensional heat equation solver which
+ is parallelized with MPI. The code features non-blocking point-to-point
+ communication, user defined datatypes, and parallel I/O with MPI I/O
+ (C, Fortran and Python versions). Level: *advanced* 
 
 ## How to contribute