Subject: Review of paper #542 for Concurrency&Computation From: Dennis Kafura Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 16:45:27 -0500 To: gcf@indiana.edu CC: kafura@cs.vt.edu X-UIDL: 7622c61aaf210000 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) Sun Oct 14 18:05:42 2001) X-From_: fox@mailer.csit.fsu.edu Sun Oct 14 18:05:30 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 8B73423A07 for ; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 18:05:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost by dirac.csit.fsu.edu (AIX4.2/UCB 8.7) id SAA86742; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 18:05:29 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Message-Id: <200110142205.SAA86742@dirac.csit.fsu.edu> Delivered-To: fox@csit.fsu.edu Received: from mask.uits.indiana.edu (mask.uits.indiana.edu [129.79.6.184]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id A6F3523A03 for ; Mon, 1 Oct 2001 16:37:41 -0400 (EDT) Received: from lennier.cc.vt.edu (lennier.cc.vt.edu [198.82.162.213]) by mask.uits.indiana.edu (8.10.1/8.10.1/IUPO) with ESMTP id f91KZRk27940 for ; Mon, 1 Oct 2001 15:35:28 -0500 (EST) Received: from steiner.cc.vt.edu (IDENT:mirapoint@steiner.cc.vt.edu [198.82.161.185]) by lennier.cc.vt.edu (8.11.4/8.11.4) with ESMTP id f91KbbM147236; Mon, 1 Oct 2001 16:37:37 -0400 (EDT) Received: from lennier.cc.vt.edu (lennier.cc.vt.edu [198.82.162.213]) by steiner.cc.vt.edu (Mirapoint) with ESMTP id ADX68054; Mon, 1 Oct 2001 16:37:34 -0400 (EDT) Received: from kafura.cs.vt.edu (kafura.cs.vt.edu [128.173.40.86]) by lennier.cc.vt.edu (8.11.4/8.11.4) with ESMTP id f91KbYZ523984; Mon, 1 Oct 2001 16:37:34 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <5.0.0.25.2.20011001160806.033ec5e0@snoopy.cs.vt.edu> X-Sender: kafura@snoopy.cs.vt.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Resent-To: Geoffrey Fox Resent-Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 18:05:29 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox REFEREE'S REPORT Concurrency and Computation:Practice and Experience A: General Information Please return to: Geoffrey C. Fox Electronically Preferred gcf@indiana.edu Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience Computer Science Department 228 Lindley Hall Bloomington Indiana 47405 Office Phone 8128567977(Lab), 8128553788(CS) but best is cell phone 3152546387 FAX 8128567972 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 C542: Date: October 1, 2001 Paper Title: An Integrated Software Development Environment for Grid-Computing Author(s): M. Muller, E. Gabriel, M. Resch Referee: Dennis Kafura Address: Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061 kafura@cs.vt.edu Referee Recommendations. Please indicate overall recommendations here, and details in following sections. accepted provided changes suggested are made D: Referee Comments (For Editor Only) If papers with "new" content are desired, this paper would be questionable. If the intent of this special issue is to give exposure to on-going projects then this would be a reasonable paper to illustrate European grid work. E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor) Summary: This paper describes on-going projects in grid computing, both in developing applications for a transatlantic test-bed and in developing toolkits under the DAMIEN project. The authors motivate the use of a message-passing model (specifically, MPI) and identify the need for debugging and performance analysis tools. The architecture of the DAMIEN system is presented and a collection of research and commercial tools are described. The focus of the paper is on their implementation of MPI (PACX-MPI) and an associated debugging and verification tool (MARMOT). This is a paper in the style of a "status report". The authors have been involved in grid computing for some time and describe an on-going project. It is hard to tell how much of the paper is about "new" things. Of the two specific tools, described on pages 5-7, one (PACX-MPI) seems to have been described earlier (c.f. reference #7) and used in several projects (c.f. references 4, 17, 21) while the other (the MARMOT debugger) appears to be new but not groundbreaking. One small question: PACX-MPI has been used on a number of projects. Have these projects employed some/most/all of the extensions listed in the bullet list on the top of page 6? Is there performance data about the effectiveness of the optimizations and data compression? F: Presentation Changes 1. The abstract is too vague. It should give a better preview of the contents of the paper. 2. Page 2, 4th paragraph. The word "german" should be capitalized. 3. Page 3, first line of text. The word "part" should be "parts". 4. Page 3, 2nd line of text. "Message-Passing Standard" should be "Message-Passing Interface" or "Message-Passing Interface standard" or "message-passing standard MPI. 5. Page 3, lines 4/5. "Supercomputers", "Computational" and "Grids" should not be capitalized. 6. Page 3, 2nd paragraph. "figure 1" is probably better capitalized (Figure 1). 7. Page 4, 2nd bullet on page. "applications" should be "applications". Also, the phrase "solve multi-disciplinary phenomena" might be better as "investigate multi-disciplinary phenomena" or "solve multi-disciplinary problems". 8. Page 4, end of first full paragraph. " in semi-automatich" should be "in a semi-automatic". 9. Page 5, 2nd line of text. "programms" should be "programs". 10. Page 6, last full paragraph. "Classical Debuggers" should be "Classical debuggers". Also, immediately after the reference [13, 22] there appears to be some missing words as the next sentence begins "approach is to ...". .