Newsgroups: comp.parallel.mpi
From: jpprost@watson.ibm.com (Jean-Pierre Prost)
Subject: BOF at SC'94 about MPI-IO
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 18:04:56 GMT
Message-ID: <Cyuy88.5oqu@hawnews.watson.ibm.com>

          Birds Of a Feather session at Supercomputing '94
          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

          Wednesday, Nov. 16, 7:30 - right after the MPI BOF

	  MPI-IO  ---  Creating a Standard for Parallel I/O

Thanks to MPI, writing portable message passing parallel programs is
almost a reality. One of the remaining problems is file I/O. Although
parallel file systems support similar interfaces, the lack of a
standard makes developing a truly portable program impossible.
Further, the closest thing to a standard, the UNIX file interface,
is ill-suited to parallel computing.

Working together, IBM and NASA Ames have drafted MPI-IO, a proposal to
address the portable parallel I/O problem. The main purpose of the BOF will
be to discuss the proposal, and possibly expand the team of people
participating in a prototype implementation expected to be completed
by the end of first quarter 1995.  The intent is to launch and widely
advertise MPI-IO, in order to let a "standard" for concurrent/parallel
I/O emerge.

