[resending now that I've joined the Open MPI users list, sorry for the duplicate]
Hi Jed, Thanks for looping me on this mail thread. Jed Brown wrote on Thu, 17 Jul 2014 at 11:19:42 > Damien <dam...@khubla.com> writes: > >> Is this something that could be funded by Microsoft, and is it time >> to approach them perhaps? MS MPI is based on MPICH, and if mainline >> MPICH isn't supporting Windows anymore, then there won't be a whole >> lot of development in an increasingly older Windows build. With the >> Open-MPI roadmap, there's a lot happening. Open-MPI isn't supporting Windows anymore either, and I would think it fair to say that a lot is happening in both Open-MPI and MPICH (for non-Windows environments). >> Would it be a >> better business model for MS to piggy-back off of Open-MPI ongoing >> innovation, and put their resources into maintaining a Windows build >> of Open-MPI instead? Microsoft doesn't simply maintain a Windows build of MPICH. While MS-MPI is derived from MPICH, at this point it is really a more of a fork given how much Windows-specific work we've done that isn't applicable to the mainline MPICH development. We're continuing to invest in the development of MS-MPI, and our focus continues to be on user-requested features. We strongly believe that users care more about feature content than which codebase we are derived from - after all, portability is one of the main goals of the MPI standard. We've worked very hard to maintain ABI over the various versions of MS-MPI, and a fundamental shift to a different implementation would wreak havoc on users and our ISV partners. > Maybe Fab can comment on Microsoft's intentions regarding MPI and > C99/C11 (just dreaming now). I can't really comment on the C99/C11 stuff, as that's a completely different organization within Microsoft. Rob seems to have shed some light on this (thanks for finding that Rob!) >From an MPI perspective, we've been investing in making ourselves available to >our user and developer community, whether through email >(mailto:ask...@microsoft.com, CC'd), through our beta program on Microsoft >Connect (https://connect.microsoft.com/HPC/MS-MPI), where users can request >(and vote for) features (https://connect.microsoft.com/HPC/Feedback), or >through our web forums >(http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=windowshpcmpi). We'd >very much like to get input from our user community to help shape our features >content going forward. I'm not familiar with PETSc, but would be happy to develop a closer relationship with the developers to enable better integration of MS-MPI into the PETSc environment. Conceptually, a --download-msmpi option would be great, and we already allow redistribution of our installer package with third party applications (to enable bundling) if that makes more sense. -Fab >> On 2014-07-17 11:42 AM, Jed Brown wrote: >>> Rob Latham <r...@mcs.anl.gov> writes: >>>> Well, I (and dgoodell and jsquyers and probably a few others of >>>> you) can say from observing disc...@mpich.org traffic that we get >>>> one message about Windows support every month -- probably more often. >>> Seems to average at least once a week. We also see regular petsc >>> support emails wondering why --download-{mpich,openmpi} does not >>> work on Windows. (These options are pretty much only used by >>> beginners for whom PETSc is their first encounter with MPI.)
