Basic HTML version of Foils prepared 19 September 98

Foil 31 Comments on Parallel Input/Output - I

From MPI Message Passing Interface Computational Science for Simulations -- Fall Semester 1998. by Geoffrey C. Fox, Nancy McCracken
Parallel I/O has technical issues -- how best to optimize access to a file whose contents may be stored on N different disks which can deliver data in parallel and
Semantic issues -- what does printf in C (and PRINT in Fortran) mean?
The meaning of printf/PRINT is both undefined and changing
  • In my old Caltech days, printf on a node of a parallel machine was a modification of UNIX which automatically transferred data from nodes to "host e.g. node 0" and produced a single stream
  • In those days, full UNIX did not run on every node of machine
  • We introduced new UNIX I/O modes (singular and multiple) to define meaning of parallel I/O and I thought this was a great idea but it didn't catch on!!

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