[mpich-devel] mpi is dying?

[Rob Latham]

On 04/09/2015 09:45 AM, Jeff Hammond wrote:
> Oh, but then - <bam> - we see on slide 33, "Hide communication inside
> "distributed array".  OMG it's a high-level abstraction layer on top
> of MPI that hides the supposed assembly language of parallel
> programming and makes the programmer productive.
>
> But maybe Baidu is exceptional and most HPC programmers who deal with
> array are doomed to tedious MPI programming.  Let's see if there any
> distributed array abstraction layers out there that hide MPI.  It took
> me about 42 microseconds to find http://libelemental.org/ and
> https://www.emsl.pnl.gov/docs/global/, and those are just the ones
> that I have a personal relationship with.  And that is just the tip of
> the MPI library iceberg.
>
> So yeah, most people that criticize MPI do so in a manner that is
> logically equivalent to "Linux is way better than Fortran".

This is but one of the points made, but I'm glad you brought it up. 
Parallel HDF5 and Parallel-NetCDF layer on top of MPI-IO routines, as 
well. so you and I know MPI meets one of its goals: be a good foundation 
for parallel libraries.

Can you speak to Dursi's point about Gasnet and Charm++ 's relationship 
to MPI?   It was you, not the GASNET folks, that developed the MPI 
transport layer for ARMCI, after all, but I am not familiar with those 
groups thought processes.

==rob
>
> http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0109017 is a must-read, for anyone that hasn't already.
>
> Jeff
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 7:16 AM, Rob Latham <robl at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
>> I (and it seems quite a few others) found this yesterday:
>>
>> http://www.dursi.ca/hpc-is-dying-and-mpi-is-killing-it/
>>
>> The premise is a couple things:
>> - spark, hadoop, and the "silicon valley stack" has tremendous mindshare
>> - MPI is too hard for application writers
>> - and too challenging for library writers
>> - and HPC has "not invented here" blinders keeping it from adopting new
>> techonolgy
>>
>> now, when someone writes "X is dying" it's more of an opening position
>> statement for a discussion than a statement of fact.    But it does bother
>> me immensely that there is an "HPC stack" and a "silicon valley stack".
>> Convergence is happening, but not fast enough.
>>
>> ==rob
>>
>> --
>> Rob Latham
>> Mathematics and Computer Science Division
>> Argonne National Lab, IL USA
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>
>
>

-- 
Rob Latham
Mathematics and Computer Science Division
Argonne National Lab, IL USA