> If there is an ABI then we have a fighting chance at focusing on the > applications and not the ever-so-slightly-strange version of whichever > flavor of MPI that they chose to use.
wonderful! yes: ABI standards are good and proprietary implementations (which inherently provide only negative definitions of support) are bad. after all, the real appeal is that N MPI implementation only need to test their own conformity to the standard, and M applications test their conformity. ie, N+M tests, rather than N*M without an ABI. this assumes that the ABI/standard is broad enough, of course! first, it's worth asking whether there is something to be lost by going to an ABI? yes, dynamic linking imposes some overhead - I have to wonder whether some of the higher-performing interconnects (SGI/Cray/Quadrics/Pathscale) are low-latency enough to worry about indirect library calls blowing the pipeline.
