- Virtual Parallel Languages and Environments
- Geoffrey Fox NPAC
- Andrew Sherman SCA
- Cal Rbbens Virginia Tech
- Manish Parashar Texas
- Sherman SCA -I
- *Agrees with my analysis and goals with different technology
- *Virtual Shared Memory very good for PSE
- *Store data so greater than one process can examine at same time -- enables computational steering and monitoring simultaneously
Sherman SCA -II
- *Khoros-Paradise System for Navy -- Khoros natural as Navy interested in signal processing
- *Paradise replaces transport mechanism in Khoros and you have virtual shared memory -- not file -- between modules
- *Piranha does scheduling of different modules including replication of the different stateless(often true) Khoros modules
- *This enables parallel Khoros
- Parashar -- Black Hole
- *Process involved complex cycle between CS and application scientists to identify requirements
- *Merged multipole, black hole and FEM technologies
- *DAGH Technologies for parallel adaptive hierarchical AMR implemented in C++
- *Has shadow grid hierarchy for on the fly error estimaion
- *Good performance compared to hand coded software
- *C++ driver calls Fortran routines in coarse grain model
- Ribbens
- *Was in ELLPACK project at Purdue -- a user not developer of languages
- *Works with engineers at Virginia Tech
- *There is no holy grail language or paradigm
- *Some sacrifice in raw performance possible
- *MDO codes need shell scripts/wrappers
- Ribbens
- *Compares with Pasadena1 workshop
- -likes HPF and MPI forum process
- -Not clear if good progress in tools
- -What about process of building "advanced prototype"
- *Is there a PSE forum -- is problem well defined
- *Sems to agree Web is a reasonable starting point
- *Agrees that AVS is a good model and in general visual programming environment
- *What is a VPE (Virtual Parallel Environment)
- *How important/useful is:
- -visual programming
- -shared address space
- -a template
- -existing code re-use -- one trusts existing code!
- Questions from Audience -- I
- *Why shared memory in Sherman's example
- -User sees conventional Khoros
- -Systems uses shared memory
- *Ribbens says shared memory supports incrementalism
- *Only developers or expert users will address closely coupled applications
- *Skjellum -- Java linked to MPI -- abandon PERL
- Questions from Audience -- II
- *Do we agree on division between coarse grain and fine grain parallelism
- *AVS/Khoros checks if modules should be connected
- *Is set of modules the correct model!
- -Smith says no -- do top down -- he seems to be very puristic as current modules "artificial" -- I don't agree!
- -rather mix top down and bottom up approaches
- *PDE's solvers are clearly used cf. NASTRAN but PSE"S are not taking world by storm
- *Typical discussion of interdisciplinary research with industry, computer science -- application interaction, computational scien