[Mpi3-ft] UAB Alternative Fault-Tolerant Proposal

[Anthony Skjellum]

Dear group, 

As promised right after the last MPI-3 meeting, we have prepared an alternative Fault-tolerant 
proposal for MPI-3.  This started from the premise that by starting from a different set of
assumptions, we could provide a complete alternative.  

This starts from scratch per se, as mentioned earlier.  We denote this FA-MPI or Fault-Aware
MPI, to distinguish it from the main line of discussion, which is of course Fault-Tolerant MPI.

The main idea is  hardened collective transactions on all non-blocking MPI-3 programs.  The use 
of all non-blocking MPI operations is designed to connect efficiently with the expectation of
highly non-blocking programs for exascale, ones that emphasize overlap of communication,
computation, and I/O.

This is not yet condensed into an MPI-3 Format proposal (we will only do so if there is
significant interest in pursuing this proposal).

This lacks section 7.7 MPI-3 1-sided, 7.8 I/O, 7.9 initialization/deinitialization of I/O & 1-sided (ancillary);
Nonetheless, we wanted to share the proposal now.

We are still evaluating MPI-3 1-sided :-) frankly.  We will be done with the File I/O
in a few days; and the 1-sided shortly thereafter.  

We recognize that this is a quite different approach, and may or may not be appropriate for the Forum
at this time.  

Once we get feedback, we intend to implement this model ASAP... we are just beginning implementation
plans.  If it does not get to be part of an MPI-3 standard, we are still interested in fully 
expressing this model as extensions for MPI-3.

With kind regards,
Tony


PS Please note that this is a draft to the MPI-3 Forum, it is not a publication, just a draft.
We will provide a version of this a) as an MPI-3 proposal if that's of interest, and b)
this document as a finalized tech report, and later c) a conference paper :-)

-- 
Anthony Skjellum, PhD
Professor and Chair
Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences
Director, UAB Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research ("The Center")
University of Alabama at Birmingham
+1-(205)934-8657; FAX: +1- (205)934-5473

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