Hi, With this debate over a common interface, I've noticed that some have been talking about a common API (ie: code-level compatibility) and others an ABI (ie: binary-level compatibility). There's a big difference, so I think it might be helpful if it was cleared up as to what it was that was wanted. :)
Assuming an ABI, I suggest calling it IPM (for Implementation-Proof MPI - yes, another recursive acronym! :) An ABI could be written as: 1) A wrapper that the program linked to, where the wrapper could connect to any one of a number of MPI libraries 2) A wrapper around the MPI library which provided a standard interface programs could be compiled against 3) An environment that dlopen()ed both the program AND an MPI library Any of these would allow you to have a high degree of independence of language-specific quirks, (1) in particular as you could both generic and language-specific transliteration code. You'd simply link to what was most appropriate. (1) would also have the benefit that you could effectively exploit compiler-specific features (eg: OpenMP) or language-specific parallelisms (eg: Occam) because the wrapper would (in part or in whole) be inside the application and therefore would have access to all of these bug^H^H^Hfeatures. (2) has the benefit that the library presents a common interface, no matter what. Any variation can be handled inside the wrapper. That means you could use anything that provides essentially the same capabilities, not just MPI. It might also make it easier to handle mixed MPI-1 and MPI-2 environments, as the differences at the application layer would be transparent. (3) has the advantage that you could hot-swap MPI implementations, while an application is running. This might be interesting in network research and possibly useful for really exotic environments, I can't see it would have much to offer otherwise. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
