[Mpi-forum] MPI-Forum: Next Steps and Meeting Options

[Martin Schulz]

Hi all,

First of all, I hope everyone is doing well. I imagine most of you are under some kind of limitations and/or in home office and I hope you were able to adjust well!

With the current situation regarding Corona/COVID-19 we have to face the fact that our planned MPI Forum meetings may not be happening as planned, which of course impacts our timeline for MPI 4.0, as well as related activities. On the other hand, things are too unsure to sit this out and only wait for things to get better, and hence we need to find a way to keep moving forward, even if this is only virtual. 

Bill, Wesley and I met on Wednesday (over the web, of course) and discussed some options, which we would like to bring to the whole forum. The core is a proposal to hold, if necessary, the next meeting, worst case the next two meetings, virtually. This would, of course, require some rule changes, but we think we found a way to do this while still preserving the spirit of our rules and the usual “way of the MPI Forum”.

Wesley has put together some text for this under the following PR:

https://github.com/mpi-forum/procedures/pull/5 <https://github.com/mpi-forum/procedures/pull/5>

We will discuss these new rules in the next virtual meeting (see below for more on that) and then - if applicable - vote on it in one of the following meetings.

Whether we need to hold a virtual meeting instead of a real face to face is more or less dictated by our associated events: the Munich meeting will be virtual depending on ISC and whether people can travel to that, and the Austin meeting will be dependent on EuroMPI/USA (although we really hope, that things are back up and running again by then).

As for meetings until then, we will restart our regular Wednesday meetings (at 10am CT) as of next week. The meeting next week, i.e., April 1st (not meant as a joke :) ) will have the following agenda:

	- Discussion on holding virtual meetings and the necessary rule changes
		- Wesley has prepared a presentation to show the options
	- Discussion on structure and agenda for the June meeting if it is virtual
		- We have a proposal on length, scope, timing and structure
	- Check-in on Chapter Committee progress (see Bill’s latest email)
		- This is a prerequisite before we can do any other changes or merges
		- Please prioritize this and complete the reviews by Wednesday!
	- Plan to move the smaller changes for MPI 4.0 forward
		- Mainly based on the list of the 120+ issues Bill found
	- Collection of topics for future virtual meetings
		- Pre-readings, possible errata discussions
		- Other WG discussion topics?

If time remains and for the following Wednesday meetings (unless other topics needed for MPI 4.0 are suggested) we will then just work ourselves through all open issues, focusing first on ticket 0 and errate items. Completing these will hopefully make the ratification process a much easier one.

If there are any other topics that should be added to the agenda, or if there are any concerns, please let me know. Otherwise, talk to you all next Wednesday,

Thanks and stay safe and healthy!

Martin (plus Bill and Wesley)



—
Prof. Dr. Martin Schulz, Chair of Computer Architecture and Parallel Systems
Department of Informatics, TU-Munich, Boltzmannstraße 3, D-85748 Garching
Member of the Board of Directors at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ)
Email: schulzm at in.tum.de

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