Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: tony@aurora.cs.msstate.edu (Tony Skjellum)
Subject: Re: Is PVM Thread Safe?
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: 17 Jul 1995 19:56:14 GMT
Message-ID: <3uef8u$6v7@NNTP.MsState.Edu>

Do either of these solutions conserve legacy codes?  TPVM seems like
it might, because thread-oriented calls have a new call, whereas
PVM mainline version will have to have a new argument in almost all
calls [at least those that refer to a message buffer].  Even with
calls that refer to a message buffer having a message-buffer ID,
will PVM be thread-safe once the new contexts, static groups,
and other feature are added, as discussed at the PVM UG meeting?
-Tony Skjellum


Honbo Zhou (hzhou@cs.utk.edu) wrote:
: In article <3tbl9h$fb@NNTP.MsState.Edu> tony@aurora.cs.msstate.edu (Tony Skjellum) writes:
: >The PVM API has unsafe aspects to it.  
: >
: >In pseudo-calls:
: >	Initialize a buffer
: >	Pack
: >	Pack
: >	...
: >	Pack
: >	Send or Mcast
: >One needs to know which message a given pack applies to; in the
: >thread world, this is not well-defined, unless we restrict ourselves
: >to the PVM 2.x model of one message at a time, which is unlikely
: >to be your choice.

: The change of PVM user interface seems inevitable in the thread world.
: The change is to have pvm_initsend() to return a send buffer id, lots
: of stuff could be packed into this buffer just like the current PVM does.
:  
: >How have you modified the API to accomodate thread safety? Are you
: >using a thread ID in calls?
: >-Tony Skjellum

: Yes, check ths LPVM home page at:

: http://www.epm.ornl.gov/~zhou/ltpvm/ltpvm.html

: There is a sample LPVM program there showing the changes.

: A paper describe LPVM will also be found there in a couple of days.

: Honbo Zhou 


--
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|      Anthony Skjellum, PhD, Assistant Professor of Computer Science         |
|                  Department of Computer Science &                           |
|     NSF Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation      |
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