[mpich-devel] mpi is dying?

[Rob Latham]

On 04/09/2015 09:45 AM, Jeff Hammond wrote:
> www.hammond.us/programming-model-discourse-is-dying-and-false-dichotomies-are-killing-it/
>
> Let's look at http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/webinar/gtc-express-acoates-webinar.pdf.
> The author works for Baidu's Silicon Valley AI Lab.  Baidu is the
> Chinese Google.  About as Silicon Valley as it gets.

we can find silicon valley using MPI, but it's not widespread.  Another 
instance that comes to mind is this not heavily cited 2007 work from 
yahoo using mpi for indexing:

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-540-75416-9_21

==rob


> Slide 30 says:
>
> OTS HPC Sotware Infrastructure
> •  Infiniband (“IB”): Use MPI
>   –  MPI = Message Passing Interface
>    •  Standard mid-level API usually supporing IB.
>
> Slide 32 says "Enables message passing, but this is pretty unnatural."
>   I guess Dursi is right.  MPI sucks so hard.  And it's definitely MPI
> alone that uses send-recv semantics.  It's not like the Internet is
> based upon that or anything.  And one definitely must switch to UPC to
> get one-sided semantics.
>
> 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".
>
> 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