VMPI

An unreleased tool which is used for distributed compiles, reducing the compile time by distributing the work among multiple networked machines. The Source Engine features page, under the tools header, implies that VMPI is included to licensees as part of the Source Engine package. It may seem that Valve avoided a legal issue by not releasing their mpi API adaptation.

VMPI uses MySQL to track it's usage and so it can actually compile over a network of computers. VMPI itself is split in to two different applications: vmpi_service_ui, vmpi_service, vmpi_browser_job_search, and vmpi_browser_job_watch.

Options

VMPI seems to be called by applications such as Vvis and Vrad through two commandline switches on the respective tools:

-mpi: Use VMPI to distribute computations.

-mpi_pw <password>: Use a password to choose a specific set of VMPI workers.