All - The signatories of this letter represent the majority of MPI implementors participating in the MPI Forum. We are concerned that proposal #140 ("Add const Keyword to the C bindings") has a number of issues which suggest delaying to MPI-3 would be appropriate. In particular, the proposal: - Is likely to pass a simple majority vote, but does not carry the support of the majority of MPI implementors, suggesting consensus has not been reached. - Changes 90+ MPI API interfaces, which is not a "trivial" change and therefore does not meet the intent of the MPI-2.2 process. - Is not needed to fix any serious bug in the standard text or to solve an issue that cannot easily be avoided by the MPI application. - Does not offer any demonstrable optimization opportunities for implementation or application, but may constrain future implementation opportunities. Therefore, we ask for your assistance in deferring proposal #140 to the MPI-3 process, where more time can be spent assessing its impact. Thank you, - Cisco: Jeff Squires - Intel: Alexander Supalov & Keith Underwood - Sandia: Brian Barrett - IBM: Richard Treumann - QLogic: Avneesh Pant - UTenn: George Bosilca - HP: David George Solt - UHouston: Edgar Gabriel - Myricom: Patrick Geoffray - ORNL: Richard Graham - Sun: Terry Dontje - NEC: Hubert Ritzdorf & Jesper Traeff Dick Treumann - MPI Team IBM Systems & Technology Group Dept X2ZA / MS P963 -- 2455 South Road -- Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 Tele (845) 433-7846 Fax (845) 433-8363 *