Subject: Re: Request to review a paper
Resent-Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2000 15:48:33 -0400
Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox <gcf@mailer.csit.fsu.edu>
Resent-To: Geoffrey Fox <gcfpc@csit.fsu.edu>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 17:01:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Vaidy Sunderam <vss@mathcs.emory.edu>
To: fox@csit.fsu.edu

Geoffrey,

Below, please find my review of the paper you sent
me recently for refereeing. I hope  my comments are
helpful. Please let me know if I can be of any
further assistance.

Regards

Vaidy Sunderam

                             REFEREE'S REPORT

            Concurrency and Computation:Practice and Experience

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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: C467

   * Date: 8/3/00

   * Paper Title: VGDS: A Distributed Data Structure Framework for
        Scientific Computation

   * Author(s): Lu and Wu

   * Referee: Vaidy Sunderam

   * Address: Dept. of Math & CS, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322

Referee Recommendations. Please indicate overall recommendations here, and
details in following sections.

  1. publish as is (very minor suggestions/edits)

D: Referee Comments (For Editor Only)

E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor)

        This is an interesting paper that is well-suited for
        publication in CP & E. The authors present some good
        background information and motivation for the VGDS
        framework, and make a strong case fpr libraries of
        data structures architecturally layered via the
        VGDS abstraction - in such a way that the modeling
        is conceptually clear, while making implementations
        practicable. The description of the framework itself
        is comprehensive enough to understand the architecture
        well. Similarly, the critical issues in implementation
        are identified in Section 3, followed by a concise
        description of their practical implementation. I would
        suggest a slightly more detailed discussion of the
        coherence issues on page 7. The case study in the
        following section helps to consolidate the framework;
        I would like to see discussions of other data structures
        if possible. The most attractive aspect of the project and
        the paper is that it includes results for several
        applications and interestingly, the results indicate
        a very high level of efficiency (90%). One question
        I had concerns scalability -- this issue should at
        least be discussed further or preferably, empirical
        results on scaling should be provided. Finally,
        the authors should indicate or comment on the availability
        of the software, since as a "practice and experience"
        work, it is very likely to be of interest and
        value to practitioners. If these minor suggestions
        are incorporated, the paper will become worthy of
        publication and I thus recommend acceptance.

F: Presentation Changes