Subject: Review for paper #C515 From: Santosh Pande Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 18:36:14 -0400 (EDT) To: Geoffrey Fox X-UIDL: 5807396ba1180000 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Received: by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (mbox gcfpc) (with Cubic Circle's cucipop (v1.31 1998/05/13) Thu Sep 27 12:08:48 2001) X-From_: fox@mailer.csit.fsu.edu Thu Sep 27 08:20:04 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: gcfpc@csit.fsu.edu Received: from dirac.csit.fsu.edu (dirac.csit.fsu.edu [144.174.128.44]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 837CC23A25 for ; Thu, 27 Sep 2001 08:20:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost by dirac.csit.fsu.edu (AIX4.2/UCB 8.7) id IAA47386; Thu, 27 Sep 2001 08:20:03 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Message-Id: <200109271220.IAA47386@dirac.csit.fsu.edu> Delivered-To: fox@csit.fsu.edu Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6605223A32 for ; Tue, 18 Sep 2001 18:35:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tokyo.cc.gatech.edu (tokyo.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.114.15]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.9.1/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA09685 for ; Tue, 18 Sep 2001 18:35:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (santosh@localhost) by tokyo.cc.gatech.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA19443 for ; Tue, 18 Sep 2001 18:36:14 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <3B143099.5040201@csit.fsu.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Resent-To: Geoffrey Fox Resent-Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 08:20:03 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Dear Geoffrey, I am enclosing the review of the paper you sent me below. Sorry it took so long. The paper was quite weak and so I am recommending a rejection. If you have any questions about the review please let me know. thanks santosh > REFEREE'S REPORT > Concurrency and Computation:Practice and Experience > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > A: General Information > > Please return to: > Geoffrey C. Fox > Electronically Preferred fox@csit.fsu.edu > Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience > Computational Science and Information Technology > Florida State University > 400 Dirac Science Library > Tallahassee Florida 32306-4130 > Office FAX 850-644-0098 > Office Phone 850-644-4587 but best is cell phone 3152546387 > > Please fill in Summary Conclusions (Sec. C) and details as appropriate in > Secs. D, E and F. > > B: Refereeing Philosophy > > We encourage a broad range of readers and contributors. Please judge papers > on their technical merit and separate comments on this from those on style > and approach. Keep in mind the strong practical orientation that we are > trying to give the journal. Note that the forms attached provide separate > paper for comments that you wish only the editor to see and those that both > the editor and author receive. Your identity will of course not be revealed > to the author. > > C: Paper and Referee Metadata > > * Paper Number Cnnn: C515 > > * Date:i Sept. 18th 2001 > > * Paper Title: A Parallel Algorithm for Static Slicing of Concurrent Programs > > * Author(s): D. Goswami, R. Mall > > * Referee: Santosh Pande > > * Address: College of Computing, Georgia Tech > > Referee Recommendations. Please indicate overall recommendations here, and > details in following sections. > > 3. reject > > D: Referee Comments (For Editor Only) This paper does not have enough contribution as is to warrant a journal publication. The language/programming model is too simplified/much of the related work missing and practical results completely lacking. See some more comments below. > > E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor) > I find the following problems with the work: 1. The language seems to be too simplified -- in the sequential setting it does not have aliases, irregular control flow etc. which makes it unrealistic from a practical point of view. In the parallel setting, it does not have any interrupt driven communication etc. (such as hrecv() etc.) Many modern languages including Java have these features and recent work on slicing is focussed on these issues. 2. Why you do not use use notion of control dependence etc. to develop sequential slices? Definition 1 seems to be weak and lacking a clear explanation. See Hiralal Agrawal's work in PLDI '93 which formalized the systematic way of discovering closure in terms of control and data dependences using control dependences (BTW, this work needs to be cited) 3. Your performance figures are ad-hoc. In particular, which benchmarks did you use? What was the baseline of comparisons. Also please provide raw number of timings. Esp. in a practical journal such as Concurrency: Practice and Experience these things are essential.. 4. Which system did you use to program your parallel algorithm? Some analysis of complexity of parallel algorithm is needed in case you submit it to a theoretically oriented journal such as Parallel Computing. > F: Presentation Changes > > Up front some presentation needs improvements. You should motivate the problem by citing practical examples and why slicing is time consuming. Also, distinguish between static and dynamic slicing. A more thorough survey of current work on slicing is essential. > .