RE: [mpi-21] Call for MPI 2.2 and 3.0 agenda items for the Jan meeting

["Supalov, Alexander" <alexander.supalov@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everybody,

I think the ABI topic should be accompanied by definition of the
validation/certification procedure, be that a comprehensive test suite
with predefined outcomes or such. Having a common ABI and still behaving
differently on some applications won't help customers move between MPI
implementations, which is a common ABI is primarily intended for. By the
way, the ABI extends beyond the function interface - it includes library
naming, process startup, etc.

About the Java, C#, and other "new" interfaces: if they are really
necessary, the Forum for me is the only place where "official" MPI
bindings can be approved. They may be developed elsewhere, but if
somebody want their binding to achieve that status, they should come up
with a proposal and work with or, better, in the Forum.

One worthy MPI-3 topic would be a new edition of the unified standard
document (MPI-1 + MPI-2 + MPI-3). It's just plain inconvenient to go
thru so many different books and, hopefully not for long, multiple
errata. I see that MPI-2 will be proofread for the January meeting. Is
there an intention to unify the standard documents later on?

Finally, there's this never dying controversy around making no MPI calls
and making progress (see the August-September discussion related to the
generalized requests, for one). Do we want to clarify this in the
standard once and forever in unambiguous terms? This may even be an
MPI-2.1 item, by the way.

Best regards.

Alexander

--
Dr Alexander Supalov
Intel GmbH
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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-mpi-21@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-mpi-21@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Richard Graham
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 8:27 PM
To: mpi-21@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [mpi-21] Call for MPI 2.2 and 3.0 agenda items for the Jan
meeting

This is a call for items to be included on the agenda for the Jan
meeting of
the MPI Forum.  These should be items that people want to consider for
the
2.2 and 3.0 (we have not agreed on what these will be called) version of
the
MPI standard.

As before, what these need to be are real proposals, i.e. we need to
have a
solid proposal for the change/addition being proposed, with pros and
cons.
Given the meeting time, I don't expect that we will have time for a more
than four items for 2.2, and one or two for 3.0.  Given the limited
time, I
expect that, depending on the number of agenda items, this will be an
opportunity to start the discussions on these topics, but not much more
than
this.  It would be good to circulate any of these proposals to the
mailing
list at least one week prior to the meeting (e.g. By 1/7/2008) to allow
people time to study these proposals.  The items that have been
mentioned so
far (and will need champions with concrete proposals, if these are to be
addressed) are

  2.2 (I expect some of these may need to move to 3.0)
  ****************************************************
  - adding the const declaration to a select set of API arguments
  - ABI
  - send buffer access
  - Changing count arguments from an MPI_Int to a type that will
accommodate
values larger than 2^32

  3.0
  ***
  - Revamped one-sided communications
  - Improved support for generalized requests
  - Non-blocking collectives
  - New support for process fault tolerance
  - Sub-setting functionality

Rich
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