On Mar 25, 2005, at 5:03 PM, Greg Lindahl wrote:
I don't see it that way. First, the implementations of the translation layers will be done by each MPI implementations.In which case it's basically the same as doing an ABI. Or did I miss something? Does this somehow save a significant amount of work for anyone?
YES!MorphMPI (or, as Patrick suggests, we need a cooler name -- PatrickMPI? ;-) ) is the work of 1 grad clever student (or anyone else industrious enough). Elapsed time: a few months.
Making even 2 MPI implementations agree on an ABI is an enormous amount of work. Given that two major MPI implementations take opposite sides on the pointers-vs.integers for MPI handles debate (and I suspect that neither is willing to change), just getting them to agree on one of them will be a major amount of work. Then changing the internals of one of those MPIs to match the other is another enormous amount of work (death by a million cuts).
And MPI handles is only one issue. Consider all the rest of the issues... Elapsed time: 2 years (that's optimistic).
Also, as I pointed out in my original alternate proposal, with PatrickMPI, only those who want to use an ABI will use it. Those who do *not* want an ABI do not have to have it forced upon them.
--
{+} Jeff Squyres
{+} The Open MPI Project
{+} http://www.open-mpi.org/
