C: Paper and Referee Metadata
 
* Paper Number Cnnn: C516
 
* Date: July 3rd. 2001   
 
* Paper Title: An Analysis of VI Architecture Primitives in Support of
               Parallel and Distributed Communication

* Author(s): Andrew Begel, Philip Buonadonna, David E. Culler, David Gay
 
* Referee: Mark Baker
 
* Address: University of Portsmouth
 

Referee Recommendations. Please indicate overall recommendations here,
and details in following sections.
 
1. publish with minor changes

 
D: Referee Comments (For Editor Only)
none.
 

E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor)

This paper presents a detailed performance analysis of VI primitives and
its implication for the emerging InfiniBand technology.

The paper is easy to read and clear in presentation. The related work section is 
particularly helpful for readers working on improving the performance of network 
communication and protocols.

Units - The authors use MB and Kbytes -- for consistency and clarity the
unit should be Mbytes and Kbytes throughout.

Particular Comments
-------------------

Page 2, column 2, 4th paragraph - change "these anasylses did" to "this analysis did"

Page 4, column 2, section 3.3 - the authors mention "the latency for a single
message" - the authors should indicate what this message size is.

The authors should explain the annotations in table 2 and footnote 1. i.e, for 
the latter, it is not clear what is the difference in terms of terminology for 
Split-C synchronous/asynchronous calls vs. VIA blocking/non-blocking calls.

I am also curious how AM/VIA and Split-C perform using the software 
implemented VIA, e.g., MVIA, and how easy it's to port the existing TCP codes to VIA. 

I would also like to see the authors discuss the implications of assuming a reliable 
delivery of messages, and the effects on message loss.

 
F: Presentation Changes
none.