[Mpi3-tools] MPI3 tools WG Mission Statement

[Martin Schulz]

On Sep 2, 2009, at 1:46 PM, Marc-Andre Hermanns wrote:

> Hi Martin,
>
>> The goal of this working group is define interfaces that can be used
>> by both performance and correctness tools to gain information about
>> internals of the MPI library, interactions between an application and
>> the MPI library, as well as the system environment an MPI application
>> runs in. This is intended as an extension to the existing and widely
>> used PMPI interface. These efforts will help in providing reliable
>> and portable interfaces for MPI tools with new functionality
>> currently not covered by the MPI standard.
>
> Does 'correctness' tools include debuggers? It immediately triggered
> things like "Marmot" and not directly Totalview, DDT, etc., as I would
> usually not refer to a debugger as a correctness checker (but then,  
> I am
> not a native speaker).

This was intended to cover both types of tools: correctness checkers
and debuggers.

>
> To make that a little clearer I would propose the following change:
>
> The goal of this working group is to define interfaces that can be  
> used
> by third party tools to obtain internal information about the MPI
> library, as well as the system environment an MPI application runs in.
> These tools include performance analysis tools, correctness checkers  
> and
> debuggers. These interfaces are complementary to the existing PMPI
> interface. These efforts will help in providing reliable and portable
> interfaces for MPI tools with new functionality currently not  
> covered by
> the MPI standard.

Works for me.

>
>> In particular, this WG is aiming at the standardization of the
>> following interfaces:
>> - A scalable version of a process acquisition interface to identify
>> and locate all
>>   processes which are part of an MPI job.
>> - An interface to look for and locate tool DLLs.
>> - An interface to inspect message queues.
>> - An interface to understand progress in collective communication.
>> - An interface to query additional semantic information for opaque  
>> MPI
>> handles.
>> - A performance information interface that allows MPI implementations
>> to export
>>   additional low level performance information including, but not
>> limited to, the
>>   operating state of the MPI library.
>
> The time frame that was discussed today for the MPI 3.x effort was 3+1
> years. That is 3 years until 3.0 is ready, and an additional year for
> something like 3.1 (Jeff, feel free to correct me on this). I don't  
> have
> the experience yet, to estimate whether it is doable in this time  
> frame,
> but the list seems to be quite long. All the items on the list seems
> valid points of interest, though.

Most of these items have already been discussed and we have concrete
proposals on the table and they are in the process of being written up.
The only remaining item is the process acquisition interface.  
Nevertheless,
this is a lot of work and I am worried about this new March deadline for
getting this done to be included in the MPI 3 standard. We should be  
able
to get some of these items through, but it will a lot of work to make  
this
work for all items (or even just the ones for which we have concrete
ideas), in particular, since this schedule seems not to allow for any
substantial feedback from the forum - basically, it seems that if  
there are
even small objections that require a rewrite, the proposal already ends
up in 3.1 or later. Has this been discussed?

Martin


>
> Best regards,
> Marc-Andre
> -- 
> Marc-Andre Hermanns
> Juelich Supercomputing Centre
> Institute for Advanced Simulation
> Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH
> D-52425 Juelich
> Germany
>
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>
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_______________________________________________________________________
Martin Schulz, schulzm at llnl.gov, http://people.llnl.gov/schulzm
CASC @ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, USA