[Mpi3-tools] MPI3 tools WG Mission Statement

[Chris Gottbrath]

Marc-Andre,

I think adding debuggers explicitly for clarity is good.

I do think the original 'correctness tool' language covered
debuggers.

The taxonomy, as I see it, is something along the following lines.

Software development tools includes:

Correctness tools and performance tools
(and other categories)

Correctness tools includes:

Debuggers (such as TV) and correctness checking tools (such as
Marmot)


Cheers,
Chris



Chris Gottbrath, 508-652-7735 or 774-270-3155
Director of Product Management, TotalView Technologies	
chris.gottbrath at totalviewtech.com
--
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On Sep 2, 2009, at 2:46 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).
>
> 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.
>
>> 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.
>
> Best regards,
> Marc-Andre
> -- 
> Marc-Andre Hermanns
> Juelich Supercomputing Centre
> Institute for Advanced Simulation
> Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH
> D-52425 Juelich
> Germany
>
> Phone : +49-2461-61-2054
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>
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