[mpiwg-p2p] FP16 Support

[Atsushi HORI]

Hello, Bill,

> 2017/06/22 14:03、William Gropp <wgropp at illinois.edu> wrote;
> 
> On timing, note that MPI already defined optional types.  One of these is MPI_REAL2, which is a 2-byte floating point type - that is, FP16. (See p25, line 36, 177, line 2, 540 line 10, and 674 line 38).  Was MPI_REAL2 discussed?

I did not notice of that and there was no discussion about MPI_REAL2 (unless I missed).

I checked 3.1 standard as you pointed out, but MPI_REAL2 is defined as a Fortran type. I believe that there is no C predefined type for FP16 (or 'MPI_HALF') in MPI 3.1. This is just because ISO C does not define FP16 yet. 


— from p25, MPI 3.1,
MPI requires support of these datatypes, which match the basic datatypes of Fortran and ISO C. Additional MPI datatypes should be provided if the host language has additional data types: MPI_DOUBLE_COMPLEX for double precision complex in Fortran declared to be of type DOUBLE COMPLEX; MPI_REAL2, MPI_REAL4, and MPI_REAL8 for Fortran reals, declared to be of type REAL*2, REAL*4 and REAL*8, respectively; MPI_INTEGER1, MPI_INTEGER2, and MPI_INTEGER4 for Fortran integers, declared to be of type INTEGER*1, INTEGER*2, and INTEGER*4, respectively; etc.

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Atsushi HORI
ahori at riken.jp
http://aics-sys.riken.jp