Dear Dick, By the looks of it, MPI-3 is going to be big. Petascale machines may not have OS we're accustomed to, dynamic libraries, and some other things. Smaller system libraries - and smaller MPI - may be needed there. Some of the envisioned MPI-3 features will be needed for some applications, some won't. Same with MPI-2 and MPI-1. Defining subsets may help to open a way to custom cut MPI libraries suitable for particular application classes. How subsets will be implemented is a different matter. Best regards. Alexander ________________________________ From: mpi-22-bounces_at_[hidden] [mailto:mpi-22-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of Richard Treumann Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 11:23 PM To: MPI 2.2 Subject: [Mpi-22] Memory footprint concern Can somebody help me understand this "smaller memory footprint" issue that is part f the subsetting goal better. What systems does it affect? What does "memory footprint" really mean? In the 64 bit address space, virtual address range is not a problem. On systems I am most familiar with (AIX and I have been told Linux too), if you have a library that contains 1000 subroutines and you run a program than only calls 6 then only the pages that are touched by code for those 6 functions must get placed in real memory. The rest of the object code stays on disk. Program and library text is demand paged. The loading is on page boundries, not subroutine boundries. With a shared library, if I run a program on a node and touch 6 subroutines and you run a different program that touches those 6 and 10 more then code for all 16 subroutines may be kept in memory but the rest of the library will stay on disk. You and I will share the object code for the 6 subroutines we are both calling. Someone who wanted to make a libmpi that has MPI-1sided or MPI-IO well isolated in the library structure so simple MPI jobs would not force this extra code into memory could do that today. The user does not need to promise not to call MPI-IO subroutines for them not to to take real memory. The "subsets" would need to be devised by the MPI implementor but would be transparent to the MPI user and not dictated by the standard. The "subsets" the user did not call would remain paged out. Perhaps all static data defined by the library will come into real memory for each process but is there much reduction from being able to somehow not bring in the static data MPI-IO would require because somebody had promised not to use it? Dick Dick Treumann - MPI Team/TCEM IBM Systems & Technology Group Dept 0lva / MS P963 -- 2455 South Road -- Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 Tele (845) 433-7846 Fax (845) 433-8363 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Intel GmbH Dornacher Strasse 1 85622 Feldkirchen/Muenchen Germany Sitz der Gesellschaft: Feldkirchen bei Muenchen Geschaeftsfuehrer: Douglas Lusk, Peter Gleissner, Hannes Schwaderer Registergericht: Muenchen HRB 47456 Ust.-IdNr. VAT Registration No.: DE129385895 Citibank Frankfurt (BLZ 502 109 00) 600119052 This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential material for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). Any review or distribution by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete all copies. *