Re: A proposal to change the direction of 1-sided comm

Eric Salo (salo@mrjones.engr.sgi.com)
Fri, 28 Jun 1996 11:00:05 -0700

> Why are people proposing radical changes to a chapter that has already
> passed the first formal vote? Could it be that there is a profound
> lack of confidence in what we are doing? I understand the vote was 13-7-5.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I would note that many of the no votes
came from vendors and/or implementors (as did some of the yes votes). I am
sympathetic to Jarek's concern that we provide a useful model but am not at all
convinced that requiring barrier synchronization is a fatal flaw.

David makes the excellent point that if we are mandating portability then we
*must* have some sort of sync points in order to maintain coherence. A truly
1-sided API that did not require sync points would work just fine on SGI
machines, but what good is a standard if only one or two machines can support
it?

We now have a real opportunity to simplify the get/put model. We should embrace
it!

-- 
Eric Salo         Silicon Graphics Inc.             "Do you know what the
(415)933-2998     2011 N. Shoreline Blvd, 8U-808     last Xon said, just
salo@sgi.com      Mountain View, CA   94043-1389     before he died?"