I am concerned that if the price of admission to the MPI-IO chapter
is 4 days every 6 weeks (in addition to time spent between meetings),
this will cause problems for those of us with time and travel
constraints. There was an earlier email where someone referred
to some as finding some sections more "interesting" than others.
I'd like to say that it really isn't always a matter of some topics
being more "interesting", at least not in an intellectually stimulating
sense. Rather the issue is that we have more work than time and
need to set priorities, which is based, amoungst other things, on
where we can be the most effective and whether someone else from our
company is already attending. ( On that basis, in my particular situation,
there isn't much reason for me to be at the other sections.) As MPI
ventures into areas that involve more than just message-passing, I hope
the MPI forum can be reasonable and accomodating to all.
Maggie
> Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 10:52:43 -0700
> From: Bill Nitzberg <nitzberg@nas.nasa.gov>
> Sender: owner-mpi-io@mcs.anl.gov
>
> There has already been some discussion regarding setting a
> fixed agenda for the upcoming MPI forum meeting. It appears
> that several people are only interested in one subcommittee,
> and would not like to attend the general meeting.
>
> I believe it is dangerous to ignore the on goings of the other
> subcommittees. Although it is unlikely that something in the
> one-sided or real-time subcommittees could interact with I/O, I could
> imagine a case where one "wrong" decision in the external or dynamic
> subcommittee could make I/O very ugly.
>
> Keep in mind that we are not working on a standard interface for
> I/O, but a standard interface for I/O within an MPI environment.
> The overall quality of the rest of the MPI standard will directly
> effect how the I/O interface is perceived and used.
>
> That said, perhaps there is some compromise which will support
> the MPI effort, while not unduly burdening the participants
> (especially in cases where there is more than one person from
> a voting institution attending). Any ideas?
>
> At the I/O subcommittee meetings, we have been focusing on specific
> proposals which have been made (mostly regarding capabilities).
> I agree that there are a lot of semantic issues to discuss too---we
> have a lot of work to do yet. Please feel free to send any
> proposals to the mailing list, and I will incorporate them into
> the current draft for discussion at the next meeting. (Since
> the final I/O chapter must be in Steve's hands by next Monday
> morning, Aug 26th, I would need any proposals before that time.)
>
> - bill
>
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Margaret A. Cahir Scalable Applications & Algorithms
maggie@cray.com Cray Research, Inc.
655E Lone Oak Rd., Eagan, MN 55121