Thanks for your interest in MPI. I enclose some information that may answer some of your questions. We are planning to run things similar to the way the High-Performance Fortran effort did. General Organization ==================== Most of the technical details will be hammered out in subcommittees, which make the base proposals. The main group would discuss these proposals and vote on them. For running discussions, we are using loosely-enforced Robert's Rules of Order. Basically, we won't stand on formalities unless the discussion was becoming unruly. Generally, whoever was making the presentation runs the discussion, recognized comments from the floor, etc. After the discussion there is a vote. Organizations were limited to 2 attendees each. We will pass around an attendance sheet at each meeting to keep track of who is there. Organizations are asked to commit to having the same attendee at every meeting, and this was generally followed. It's very important to have this kind of continuity in attendees, else we would have spent too much time in remedial education. Each organization (school, company, lab) gets one vote - note this is on an organization basis, not a person. An organization was eligible to vote if it had attended 2 of the last 3 meetings, counting the current meeting (i.e. you could attend every other meeting and still vote; you could not vote at your first meeting). Obviously, we can't enforce this rule at the first two meetings. Subcommittee Matters ==================== Subcommittees meet independently of the main body, usually the afternoon and evening of the day before. The leader of the subcommittee runs these meetings using whatever style he or she was comfortable with. Logistical Matters ================== Meetings are 2.5 days, starting Wednesday afternoon, in Dallas (see below for details). Mailing Lists ============= The following mailing lists have been set up. mpi-comm@cs.utk.edu Whole committee mpi-intro@cs.utk.edu Introduction subcommittee mpi-pt2pt@cs.utk.edu Point-to-point communication subcommittee mpi-collcomm@cs.utk.edu Collective communication subcommittee mpi-profile@cs.utk.edu Profiling suncommittee mpi-ptop@cs.utk.edu Process topology subcommittee mpi-lang@cs.utk.edu Language binding subcommittee mpi-formal@cs.utk.edu Formal language description subcommittee mpi-envir@cs.utk.edu Environment inquiry subcommittee mpi-context@cs.utk.edu Contexts subcommittee If you are on a mailing list you will receive mail as it is posted. If you want to join a mailing list send me mail (walker@msr.epm.ornl.gov). All mail will be collected and can be retrieved by sending email to netlib@ornl.gov and in the mail message typing: send mpi-comm from mpi send mpi-intro from mpi etc. Also try: send index from mpi Address List ============ I'm trying to put together a complete mailing list for MPI. Can you fill in the following information and send it to me. Thanks, Jack Name: Address: Email: Fax: Office phone number: Home phone number: (I'll use this only in an emergency and won't circulate.) Universities Involved ===================== Univ. of Edinburgh Emory University Centro de Intelligencia Artifical, Monterrey, Mexico Mississippi State University Oregon Graduate Institute Oregon State University Purdue University Rice University Western Michigan University Yale University University of Illinois, CSRD University of Illinois, NCSA University of Southampton University of Tennessee University of Texas at Austin University of Wisconsin University of Zurich University of Colorado Laboratories Involved ===================== ARCO Exploration and Production Technology Argonne National Laboratory Cerfacs ENSEEIHT-IRIT, France GMD Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory NASA RIACS NOAA Oak Ridge National Laboratory San Diego Supercomputer Center Sandia National Laboratories Supercomputer Research Center Companies Involved ================== ARCHIPEL S.A. Cray Research, Inc. Digital Equipment Corporation IBM Austin IBM Almaden Research Center IBM Kingston IBM T.J. Watson Research Center IBM UK Scientific Centre Intel Supercomputer Systems Division Kuck and Associates, Inc. Meiko ParaSoft Corporation Parsytec Computer GmbH Thinking Machines Corporation MPI Meetings ============ Here are some details on the MPI meeting which is set for February 17th-19th 1993 in Dallas. The meeting site will be the: Bristol Suites 7800 Alpha Road Dallas, TX 214-233-7600 The room rate is $89.00. When making a reservation tell them you are with the MPI meeting. TBS Shuttle Service will be providing complimentary shuttle service to and from the airports. If you fly into DFW, use their courtesy telephone and dial 03. If you fly into Love Field, you'll have to use a pay phone. They can be reached at 817-267-5150. Upon boarding the shuttle, refer to the MPI meeting. The registration fee for the meeting will be $75. Please make checks and POs payable to University of Tennessee. We will collect this at the meeting. The registration fee will go for coffee breaks, meeting rooms, AV and printer rentals. We should plan to start at 1:00 pm Febraury 17th and finishing about noon on February 19th. The format of the meeting is: Wednesday, February 17 1:00 pm to 8:00 pm point to point subcommittee meeting 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm--On our own for dinner. after dinner: other subcommittees meet Thursday, February 18 8:00 am to 12:00 pm Collective communication subcommittee meeting 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm Subcommittee reports presented to the main group 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm-- The group dinner somewhere in the area. The hotel will provide round trip van transportation. Friday, Febraury 19 8:00 am to 12:00 pm Subcommittee reports presented to the main group For future planning here is a tentative list of dates, roughly 6 weeks apart, for the series of meetings: March 31-April 2 May 19-21 June 30-July2 If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me (walker@msr.epm.ornl.gov). MPI Forum Rules =============== General Organization Everything is public and open. Most of the technical details hammered out in subgroups, which makes the base proposals. The main group discuss these proposals and votes on adopting them. Technical discussions for the most part done on email lists. Subgroup bring their own proposal as handouts. Unified draft put together from these. Main Group / Plenary Session Matters For running discussions, use loosely-enforced Robert's Rules of Order. Basically, we won't stand on formalities unless the discussion is becoming unruly. Some of the more often-invoked rules: 1. Moving and voting on amendments before the main proposal. Basically, this will keep the discussions focussed. 2. Motions coming out of committee (subgroup) are automatically seconded; others need a second from the floor. 3. Triply-nested amendments are not allowed. This keeps the confusion down. Generally, whoever is making the presentation runs the discussion, recognized comments from the floor, etc. Convener comes in after the meat of the discussion to run the votes. Comments during discussion handled by going around the room clockwise. Organizations are limited to 2 attendees each (not enforced). Will pass around an attendance sheet at each meeting to keep track of who was there. Organizations are asked to commit to having the same attendee at every meeting. It's very important to have this kind of continuity in attendees, else we could have spent too much time in remedial education. Each organization (school, company, lab) gets one vote - note this is on an organization basis, not a person. Representatives from an organization should agreed on who is voting. An organization is eligible to vote if it had attended 2 of the last 3 meetings, counting the current meeting (i.e. you could attend every other meeting and still vote; you could not vote at your first meeting). Obviously, not enforced at the first two meetings. Accepting a section of the MPI spec is a multi-step process. 1. Someone writes a draft specification; Details of these are hashed out in the subgroup. 2. First Reading: The subgroup leader (or occasionally the draft author) presented the subgroup-approved draft to the main group. When there is controversy, it is usually pointed out. The main group discussed, suggested changes, and holds a series of "straw votes" on the proposal. All attendees are eligible to vote in straw votes, which are not binding on the subgroups. 3. More subgroup discussion, both electronic and in person at the next meeting, producing a revised proposal. 4. Second Reading: The subgroup leader presented the revised proposal to the main group. Sections that are substantially the same as the original (or an alternative presented at the first reading) are amended by motion and eventually voted on. Eligibility for votes was as explained above. Major additions are treated as first readings at this point. A few sections may be sent back to subgroup for more work; these can come back as second readings at the next meeting. 5. Once a section is accepted at second reading, it is "frozen" until the end of the MPI process. Revisions are only allowed for clarity or when new information surfaced (like discovering that the draft is self-contradictory). 6. At the end of the process (Summer '93), we promised to allow reconsideration of any feature. Subgroup Matters Subgroups meet independently of the main body, usually the afternoon and evening of the day before. The leader of the subgroup run these meetings using whatever style he or she is comfortable with. Also, there is a mailing list for each subgroup where most of the discussions goes on. Each subgroup is devoted to one topic from the following list: Introduction subcommittee Point-to-point communication subcommittee Collective communication subcommittee Process topology subcommittee Profiling subcommittee Language binding subcommittee Formal language description subcommittee Environment inquiry subcommittee The groups meet in parallel, which may cause a little friction but is logistically unavoidable. When a subject straddled two groups, the subgroup leaders would talk to each other and decide who would handle it - this may lead to minor anti-turf battles (also known as "after you" deadlock). Both groups would act as sanity checks on the results. When it comes time to write the draft, each subgroup became a chapter. The subgroup leader is the editor (and usually major author) of the chapter, and is responsible for making sure the chapter reflected the decisions made in the subgroup and in committee. Logistical Matters Meetings are 2.5 days, starting Wednesday afternoon, in Dallas. A typical schedule is Wednesday 1:00-6:00 Subgroup meeting Point-to-point subcommittee 6:00-7:30 Unofficial dinner break 7:30-10:30 More subgroup meetings Environmental Inquiry subcommittee Language Binding subcommittee Introduction subcommittee Formal Languages subcommittee Process Topology subcommittee Profiling subcommittee Thursday 9:00-12:00 Subgroup meeting Collective Communication subcommittee 12:00-1:30 Lunch (provided) 1:30-6:00 Full group meeting (and coffee breaks) 6:00-8:00 Dinner (attendees pay, but hotel provided transport to area restaurant) 8:00-10:00 (Sometimes) Full group meeting (when no full meeting, subgroups usually met instead) Friday 9:00-12:00 Full group meeting (and coffee breaks) We will try to finish as early as possible on Friday, to allow people to catch flights. We financed the meetings primarily from a per-meeting fee of $75 per attendee. We have no other source of funding at this time. For future planning here is a tentative list of dates, roughly 6 weeks apart, for the series of meetings: February 17-19 March 31-April 2 May 19-21 June 30-July2 Documentation The Draft: Steve Otto serves as our general editor, collecting the chapters and trying to smooth format details. We will try the following framework: 1. Steve has the "official" version of the draft. He sets deadlines for receiving the chapters, and edits for formatting. 2. Steve sends David Walker the whole document when all the chapters are done. 3. David sends the document to the "core" mail group (see below), puts it out for anonymous FTP, netlib, and announces it on the net. 4. Any further changes are supposed to be made to Steve's edited copy, not the original version. Each subgroup writes one chapter, generally written and/or edited by the subgroup leader. Also, the author of each section is identified in a footnote at the beginning of the section, along with the date (and occasionally other version information). The chapter authors should realize they are writing a draft chapter, not a stand-alone document. Mailing lists: Every subgroup has its own mailing list. Those lists are where most of the technical action happened. On top of that, there is a list for everybody in the world interested in MPI, and another for the "core" group. The "everybody" list is used for the meeting minutes and a few miscellaneous announcements. The core group list is primarily for the meeting attendees, but a few others are also on it for political and/or practical reasons; it got meeting details, and copies of the various proposals before the meetings. All lists are kept at cs.utk.edu People can add or delete themselves to/from any of the lists by mailing to walker@msr.epm.ornl.gov The following mailing lists have been set up. mpi-comm@cs.utk.edu Everyone mpi-intro@cs.utk.edu Introduction subcommittee mpi-pt2pt@cs.utk.edu Point-to-point communication subcommittee mpi-collcomm@cs.utk.edu Collective communication subcommittee mpi-profile@cs.utk.edu Profiling subcommittee mpi-ptop@cs.utk.edu Process topology subcommittee mpi-lang@cs.utk.edu Language binding subcommittee mpi-formal@cs.utk.edu Formal language description subcommittee mpi-envir@cs.utk.edu Environment inquiry subcommittee mpi-context@cs.utk.edu Contexts subcommittee Minutes: Rusty Lusk and Bob Knighten have agreed to take minutes for the general meeting. Each subcommittee should also have minutes taken. Advertising: Announcements of major news (new drafts, etc.) to go everywhere we can think of. This includes the "world" mailing list; newsgroups comp.lang.fortran, comp.lang.misc, and comp.parallel; (indirectly) na-net, scinet, and hpcwire. Meeting minutes go to the world and core mailing lists and the newsgroups. Good idea to mention MPI when giving talks. Jack Dongarra, Convener and Meeting Chair David Walker, Executive Director Steve Otto, Editor Rusty Lusk, Minute taker Bob Knighten, Minute taker Scott Berryman, Language Subcommittee Chair Jack Dongarra, Introduction Subcommittee Chair Al Geist, Collective-Communication Subcommittee Chair Bill Gropp, Environment-Inquiry Subcommittee Chair Rolf Hempel, Process-Topology Subcommittee Chair Jim Cownie, Profiling Subcommittee Chair Marc Snir, Point-to-Point-Communication Subcommittee Chair Steven Zenith, Formal-Language-Description Subcommittee Chair Tony Skjellum, Contexts Subcommittee Chair MPI Attendance List January Meeting Ed Anderson Cray Research eca@cray.com James Cownie Meiko jim@meiko.co.uk Jack Dongarra UT/ORNL dongarra@cs.utk.edu Jim Feeney IBM-Endicott feeneyj@gdlvm6.vnet.ibm.com Jon Flower ParaSoft jwf@parasoft.com Daniel Frye IBM-Kingston danielf@kgnvma.vnet.ibm.com Al Geist ORNL gst@ornl.gov Ian Glendinning Univ. of Southampton igl@ecs.soton.ac.uk Adam Greenberg TMC moose@think.com Bill Gropp ANL gropp@mcs.anl.gov Robert Harrison PNL rj_harrison@pnl.gov Leslie Hart NOAA/FSL hart@fsl.noaa.gov Tom Haupt Syracuse U. haupt@npac.syr.edu Rolf Hempel GMD hempel@gmd.de Tom Henderson NOAA/FSL hender@fsl.noaa.gov C. T. Howard Ho IBM Almaden ho@almaden.ibm.com Steven Huss-Lederman SRC lederman@super.org John Kapengn Western Michigan Univ. john@cs.wmich.edu Bob Knighten Intel SSD knighten@ssd.intel.com Bob Leary SDSC leary@sdsc.edu Rik Littlefield PNL rj_littlefield@pnl.gov Rusty Lusk ANL lusk@mcs.anl.gov Barney Maccabe Sandia abmacca@cs.sandia.gov Phil McKinley Michigan State mckinlehy@cps.msu.edu Chuck Mosher ARCO ccm@arco.com Dan Nessett LLNL nessett@llnl.gov Steve Otto Oregon Graduate Instiute otto@cse.ogi.edu Paul Pierce Intel prp@ssd.intel.com Peter Rigsbee Cray Research par@cray.com Ambuj Singh UC Santa Barbara ambuj@cs.ucsb.edu Marc Snir IBM snir@watson.ibm.com Robert G. Voigt NSF rvoigt@nsf.gov David Walker ORNL walker@msr.epm.ornl.gov Dennis Weeks Convex weeks@convex.com Stephen Wheat Sandia NL srwheat@cs.sandia.gov