A context is a property of communicators (defined next) that allows partitioning of the communication space. A message sent in one context cannot be received in another context. Furthermore, where permitted, collective operations are independent of pending point-to-point operations. Contexts are not explicit MPI objects; they appear only as part of the realization of communicators (below).
Advice
to implementors.
Distinct communicators in the same process have distinct contexts. A context is essentially a system-managed tag (or tags) needed to make a communicator safe for point-to-point and MPI-defined collective communication. Safety means that collective and point-to-point communication within one communicator do not interfere, and that communication over distinct communicators don't interfere.
A possible implementation for a context is as a supplemental tag attached to messages on send and matched on receive. Each intra-communicator stores the value of its two tags (one for point-to-point and one for collective communication). Communicator-generating functions use a collective communication to agree on a new group-wide unique context.
Analogously, in inter-communication, two context tags are stored per communicator, one used by group A to send and group B to receive, and a second used by group B to send and for group A to receive.
Since contexts are not explicit objects, other
implementations are also possible.
( End of advice to implementors.)