Open Forum

On the last day of the conference, Wednesday 20th September, from 6.15 pm, there will be a slot for open discussion on MPI (and possibly PVM) related issues.

Richard Graham (LANL) proposed to discuss convening an MPI 2.1 forum with the intent of clarifying the current standard, and making corrections to it. A list of items to start discussion includes, but is not limited to:

  • Clarifications to MPI datatypes
  • Clarifications to MPI one-sided communications
  • Miscellaneous corrections to the standard, such as Bill Gropp’s web page of MPI-2 errata
  • Point-to-point hints
  • Semantics for improved collectives performance.

As follow-up to Richard Graham’s issues, Stephen Siegel (University of Delaware) added the following items:

  • Add “sparse” versions of the collective functions.
  • Towards a more formal specification of nonblocking communication.

Glenn Luecke (Iowa State University) proposes to discuss combining MPI 1.1 and MPI 2.0 in one document to make the document more handy.

This forum is open for all conference participants. If you have issues you want to bring up for informal discussion in the Open Forum, please send us a mail before or during the conference. We encourage you to come prepared (with some slides) for your contribution, if any.