itaps-parallel Today's phone conf

[Mark Miller]

Hi all,

I just wanted to follow-up on the proposal to add partition and part
handle args to many iMesh functions.

What if we had some function such as

iMesh_Instance *iMesh_foobar(iMesh_instance *mh, <partition handle>, <part-handle>)

that would take the three handles and produce a, *very* temporary
iMesh_Instance thingy -- that an implementation could easily learn
was 'special' in that it housed partition and part handles -- that
could be passed into the iMesh interface? This would help us to avoid
modifying the actual interface everywhere and ensure that the
implementation could still get access to partition handle and part
handle information when (and if) it needed to.

In particular, would this work in the presence of the multiplexor or
not?

Also, regarding the note below regarding how 'concrete' I thought
the parallel interface is, let me just emphasize the (implied)
'for him' part of that note. As in, "Mark M. commented that the 
parallel interface is not yet concrete enough *for*him* for pseudo-code
application." Karen was probably just being nice by not culling
that out explicitly. But, I thought I should ;)

Mark



"Devine, Karen D." wrote:
> 
> Here are the notes from today's phone conference.
> 
> -  We discussed Carl's proposal to overload the mesh instance argument with
> partition instances and/or part handles to perform set operations.  Jason
> expressed concerns that the overloading would make implementing the
> multiplexer difficult (at best), and would complicate the implementations as
> well.
> 
> -  Lori proposed adding partition information to the argument lists of the
> existing iMesh set-based functions.  We agreed that we could change the
> iMesh interface, adding partition instance and part handle arguments to
> needed functions.  Serial implementations could pass NULL for these
> arguments.
> 
> -  Karen will fold this idea and other proposed syntax into the combined
> document for review before the next phone conference.
> 
> -  Mark M. discussed his code that performs many parallel ITAPS functions
> using the serial interface.  He can use this code to identify functionality
> that is missing or extraneous in the combined document.  Mark M. commented
> that the parallel interface is not yet concrete enough for pseudo-code
> applications.
> 
> -  Lori discussed the agenda for the March 11 bootcamp.  This bootcamp will
> be our chance to describe the parallel interface to our other ITAPS team
> members, so we should have something concrete to present and, perhaps, some
> pseudo-code showing how to use it.  The bootcamp will also include a
> discussion of Carl's paper and a talk by Ahmed on ORNL activities.
> 
> -  The proposed time for the next phone conference is Jan 7 at 1:30 PST.
> Let me know if that time doesn't work for you.

-- 
Mark C. Miller, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
email: mailto:miller86 at llnl.gov
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