Newsgroups: comp.parallel.mpi,comp.sys.super,comp.parallel,comp.os.research
From: nitzberg@nas.nasa.gov (Bill Nitzberg)
Subject: MPI-IO --- A Parallel File I/O Interface for MPI
Summary: Announcing mpi-io@nas.nasa.gov mailing list; Call for participation
Keywords: MPI-IO, MPI, Parallel I/O, parallel file system interface
Organization: NAS - NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 20:43:42 GMT
Message-ID: <D03ryE.A71@cnn.nas.nasa.gov>

	MPI-IO --- A Parallel File I/O Interface for MPI

			Call for Participation

Working together, IBM Research and NASA Ames have drafted MPI-IO, a
proposal to address the portable parallel I/O problem.  In a nutshell,
this proposal is based on the idea that I/O can be modeled as message
passing: writing to a file is like sending a message, and reading from
a file is like receiving a message.  MPI-IO intends to leverage the
relatively wide acceptance of the MPI interface in order to create a
similar I/O interface.

The current proposal represents the result of extensive discussions
(and arguments), but is by no means finished.  Many changes can be
expected as additional participants join the effort to define an
interface for portable I/O.

The current proposal, presented at Supercomputing '94 in mid November,
is available on the Web at URL:

	http://lovelace.nas.nasa.gov/MPI-IO/mpi-io.html

We are soliciting greater participation from the high performance
computing community, and are particularly interested in feedback on
the proposal.  Please send your feedback to:

	mpi-io@nas.nasa.gov

To participate in the MPI-IO discussion, you can join the mailing list
by sending a message to "mpi-io-request@nas.nasa.gov" with an empty
Subject, and the single line body, "subscribe mpi-io YOUR-REAL-NAME"
Your email address will be automatically taken from the message.

Feel free to comment on the draft by sending mail to the mailing
list regardless of whether you would like to join.  If you want
to be an observer only, the mailing list will be archived at the
Web site.

Our intent is to launch and widely advertise MPI-IO, in order to let
a "standard" for concurrent/parallel I/O emerge.



