Newsgroups: comp.parallel,comp.parallel.pvm
From: tony@aurora.cs.msstate.edu (Tony Skjellum)
Subject: UNIFY Paper available (documenting 0.9.2)
Summary: The Unify system, which provides MPI interface to PVM is described
Keywords: UNIFY, MPI, PVM, porting
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 10:48:17 GMT
Message-ID: <Ct8JCI.KFB@dcs.ed.ac.uk>

Migrating from PVM to MPI I.: The Unify System
by Vaughan, Skjellum, Reese, and Cheng
Mississippi State University
NSF Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation &
Department of Computer Science

This paper presents a new kind of portability system, {\em Unify},
which modifies the PVM message passing system to provide (currrently a
subset of) the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard notation for
message passing.  {\em Unify} is designed to reduce the effort of learning
MPI while providing a sensible means to make use of MPI libraries and
MPI calls while applications continue to run in the PVM environment.
We are convinced that this strategy will reduce the costs of porting
completely to MPI, while providing a gradual environment within which
to evolve.  Furthermore, it will permit immediate use of MPI-based parallel
libraries in applications, even those that use PVM for user code.
 
We describe several paradigms for supporting MPI and PVM message
passing notations in a single environment, and note related work on MPI
and PVM implementations.  We show the design options that existed
within our chosen paradigm (which is an MPI interface added to the base
PVM system), and why we chose that particular approach.  We indicate the
total evolution path of porting a PVM application to MPI with the
help of porting libraries. Finally, we
indicate our current directions and planned future work.

Availability: (ftp)
	aurora.cs.msstate.edu
	directory: pub/reports
	file:      unify_frontiers95.ps.Z

Sincerely,
Paula Vaughan, Tony Skjellum, Donna Reese

--
	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.      .
"There is no lifeguard at the gene pool." - C. H. Baldwin
            -             -                       -
Anthony Skjellum, MSU/ERC, (601)325-8435; FAX: 325-8997; tony@cs.msstate.edu



