[mpi-21] Detailed agenda for Jan meeting plus more details

[Richard Graham <rlgraham@xxxxxxxx>]

  First, I would like to wish all a happy new year.  I am very much looking
forward to the activities of the Forum this year.
  The steering committee met on 12/21/2007 to flesh out more details for the
meetings in 2008 and beyond, to help make the most efficient use of the two
day face-to-face meetings.  I will summarize what was discussed.

First, here is the administrative structure:
Chairman and Convener: Rich Graham
Secretary: Jeff Squyres
Treasurer: Working out details with ORNL's conference management group
Web Master: Bill Gropp
Document management:
Steering committee:
  Jack Dongarra
  Al Geist
  Rich Graham
  Bill Gropp
  Andrew Lumsdaine
  Rusty Lusk
  Rolf Rabenseifner
  (response still pending from one person)

Note that we are missing someone to handle Document Management.  If you are
interested in helping out in that manner, please let me know.

Meeting dates:  These are now official.  Please note the deviation from the
8 week schedule in April and September.
  Face-to-face:
  Jan 14-16, 2008 
  March 10-12, 2008
  April 28-30
  June 30 - July 2, 2008
  Sept 3-5, 2008 Dublin, Ireland (Euro PVM/MPI is Sept 7-10, 2008 in Dublin)
  October 20-22, 2008
  December 15-17, 2008

  Telecon: On the order of 2-4 hours, as appropriate, to be scheduled over a
three day period.  Report due back to the chairman from each working group.
  Feb 11-13, 2008
  April 7-8, 2008
  May 26-28, 2008
  August 4-6, 2008
  Sept 29-Oct 1, 2008
  Nov 24-26, 2008

Fee: $125/person per meeting.  Note that we will be charging this fee also
at the first meeting, even though Microsoft is picking up the tab.  Based on
experience from the past Forum, it was suggested that we have a small
reserve for unexpected costs (some of which have already been incurred).  As
the Forum winds down we will charge less for the meetings to use up what
ever excess exists.  ORNL conference management will be handling the
financial aspects of the meetings, and we will be trying to set up a way to
make credit card payments online.  Checks will also be accepted, and can be
made out to "MPI Forum".  Cash will not be accepted - the audit trail is
much more difficult with this.

Some guiding principals:
************************
 - Same voting procedure as used in previous forums
 - Any one can start a committee, but need critical mass of four
organizations to be sanctioned by the forum
 - Need written proposal in electronic form to start a new committee
 - Semantics need to be defined before syntax
 - Need prototype implementation for a given proposed feature.  Ideally,
this would be in one of the widely used open source implementations, such as
MPICH and/or Open MPI.
 - Separate mailing lists for the 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 efforts
 - One technical subject per e-mail
 - If interfaces are changed, consider other desired changes at the same
time, to minimize number of changes

MPI 2.1
*******
Scope of Effort:  Clarification to the MPI standards document, resulting in
a single document describing the full MPI 2.1 standard.  This includes
merging of documents, text corrections, and added clarifying text.

Instead of chapter authors, this effort will have a single coordinator.
MPI 2.1 Chairman: Rolf Rabenseifner

The MPI 1.1, 2.0, errata documents, and ballots 1 and 2 for MPI 2.1 (already
voted on) will be combined into a single document at the end of January.
Once this is done, we will need people to carefully review the merged
document for correctness.  This will undergo the regular voting procedure,
to certify the document (should not having a public reading of this
document)  In the mean time, we will proceed with corrections/clarifications
to the old documents.  These will be maintained as separate documents until
the single merged document is created and certified, and once this is done,
will merge these changes into the single document.

MPI 2.2
*******
Scope of Effort: Small changes to the standard.  A small change is defined
as one that does not break existing user code - either by interface changes
or semantic changes - and does not require large implementation changes.

As with MPI 2.1, we will have a single coordinator for this effort. (in some
cases, we may need to form separate working groups)
MPI 2.2 Chairman: Bill Gropp

Topics already proposed and included in the effort:
 - Language bindings (Note to committee: looks like the person who is
responsible for the Fortran 2003 Fortran/C bindings - Craig Rasmussen - will
participate in the Forum)
 - Send Buffer Access
 - Add const keyword

Depending on how some of work develops, some of these topics may move into
MPI 3.0

MPI 3.0
*******
Scope of Effort: Additions to the standard that are needed for better
platform and application support.  These are to be consistent with MPI being
a library providing of parallel process management and data exchange.  This
includes, but is not limited to, issues associated with scalability
(performance and robustness), multi-core support, cluster support, and
application support.

Initial Chapter Coordinators:
 - Fault Tolerance : Rich Graham
 - Generalized Requests:
 - Non-Blocking Collectives: Andrew Lumsdaine
 - One-Sided Communications: Bill Gropp and Rajeev Thakur

Agenda for Jan 14-16, 2008 Meeting:
Monday 1/14/2008
  1:00pm - 2:00pm : Welcome, overall introduction (Rich)
    - Introductions
    - Scope of the effort
    - Voting rules
    - Committee rules
  2:00pm - 2:15pm : Items from the floor (Rich)
  2:15pm - 3:15pm : MPI 2.1 Introduction (Rolf)
  3:15pm - 3:30pm : Break
  3:30pm - 5:00pm : Ballot 3 (Rolf)
  5:00pm - 6:30pm : Break for dinner (in airport area)
  6:30pm - 8:00pm : MPI 2.2 Introduction (Bill)
  8:00pm - 8:15pm : MPI 2.2 committee signup

Tuesday 1/15/2008
  9:00am - 9:30am: Discussion and straw vote on ballot #3 (Rolf)
  9:30am - 11:00 am: MPI 2.2 committee 1 and 2 meeting (Question: Bill, how
do you want to handle this ? - can you fill in details here ?)

 11:00am - 11:15am : Break
 11:15am - 11:50am : Introduction to MPI 3.0 (Rich)
 11:50am - 12:00pm : Overview of Fault Tolerance committee (Rich)
 12:00pm - 12:10pm : Overview of Generalized Requests committee ()
 12:10pm - 12:20pm : Overview of Non-Blocking Collectives committee (Andrew)
 12:20pm - 12:30pm : Overview of One-Sided Communications committee
(Bill/Rajeev)
 12:30pm - 1:30pm : Lunch (3.0 committee signup)
 1:30pm - 3:00pm : Fault Tolerance committee meeting (Rich)
 3:00pm - 3:15pm : Break
 3:15pm - 4:45pm : One-Sided Communications committee meeting (Bill/Rajeev)
 4:45pm - 8:00pm : Dinner (down town ?)
 8:00pm -10:00pm : MPI 2.2 committee meetings (Bill)
                   Generalized Requests committee meeting ()
                   Non-Blocking Collectives committee meeting (Andrew)
 

Wed 1/16/2008
 9:00am - 10:30am  : First reading of MPI 2.1 Ballot #3 (Rolf)
 10:30am - 11:50am : Report Back from Committees:
                     MPI 2.1 (Rolf)
                     MPI 2.2 (Bill)
                     Fault Tolerance (Rich)
                     Generalized Requests ()
                     Non-Blocking Collectives (Andrew)
                     One-Sided Communications (Bill/Rajeev)
 11:50am : 12:00pm : Wrap up and adjourn (Rich)

Any comments ?

Have a Happy New Year,
Rich