Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: sscott@nimitz.mcs.kent.edu (Stephen Scott)
Subject: Re: pvm_config question
Organization: Kent State University
Date: 22 Sep 1995 16:30:39 GMT
Message-ID: <43uobf$9ek@ns.mcs.kent.edu>

In article <43qjeh$sdk@nuscc.nus.sg>, sci30171@leonis.nus.sg (CHIA PARH JIN) writes:
|> Stephen Scott (sscott@nimitz.mcs.kent.edu) wrote:
|> : Concerning the function:  int info = pvm_config(nhost, narch, hostp)
|> 
|> : The PVM documentation states that the narch value is an "integer
|> : returning the number of different data formats being used."  What
|> : exactly is meant by <different data formats>?
|> 
|> : This question came about as I have a program running on a virtual
|> : machine which consists of (1)-SUN4 and (1)-HP7x and it returns for
|> : narch the value 1.  And curiously, when running the same
|> : application on only the (1)-SUN4 it still returns the value of 1 for
|> : narch.
|> 
|> : So what exactly is this "data format" and what does this number
|> : returned as narch represent?  It obviously is not referring to a
|> : different machine architecture.
|> 
|> I always thought that it means how the data is represented in the hosts.
|> like word size, 2's complement or not, big endian or little endian
|> and similar things which can be the same or different for different
|> computers.
|> 
|> Now here, as your SUN and HP has the same data format, I suppose you can
|> do `pvm_initsend(PvmDataRaw)' instead of `pvm_initsend(PvmDataDefault)'
|> before doing packing of data for sending as no conversions are necessary
|> between the hosts.
|> 
|> 
|> Cheers
|> --
|> Chia Parh Jin|Physics, Computational Science|National University of Singapore
|> Email: chiapj3@leonis.nus.sg | chiapj3@galaxy.cz3.nus.sg
|> <a href="http://www.cz3.nus.sg:8100/~chiapj3/>My Page</a>
|> 
|> Special Relativity - What You See Is What You Get. :-o



Can someone from within the current PVM group give us some 
additional information regarding this?

stephen.

