Subject: hpff-external: Re: hpff: July HPFF Meeting Minutes

From: [email-masked] (Chuck Koelbel)
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 1995 09:16:35 -0500

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At 18:16 09/11/95, Doug MacDonald wrote:
>...
>Hello,
>
>The portion of the July meeting minutes touches on a topic of interest to
>me: the object and data mapping descriptors used to provide interfaces
>between HPF routines and subroutines written in a "scalar" language such as
>C.  For instance, given an array A with a given alignment or distribution,
>a HPF routine might pass A to a C subroutine in the form of a the address
>of a predefined descriptor object that contains information about the
>shape, type, layout, etc., of A.  Is standardization of such descriptor
>sets a part of subgroup E's activities?  If not, is such an effort underway
>elsewhere?
>
>Thanks,
>Doug MacDonald
>Thinking Machines

I'm redirecting this question to the hpff-external mailing list, which
handles Group E's discussions.

You can probably get a more definitive answer from David Loveman, who
chairs the subgroup.  My take is that this is within the scope of Group E,
but has not been pursued yet.  In part, this may be because there has been
no concrete proposal.  Another reason for the delay may be that the format
and processing of array descriptors is likely to be on the critical
performance path for HPF implementations.  This will tend to make concensus
more difficult, unless someone proves beyond a reasonable doubt that some
particular format is the most efficient possible.  (What I'm saying is,
vendors don't want to share the heart of their runtime system
implementation.  If some academic project blows the commercial compilers
out of the water, there will be more leverage.)

Just my two cents...

                                                Chuck Koelbel

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From: Doug MacDonald <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 95 10:59:19 EDT

Date: Tue, 12 Sep 1995 09:16:35 -0500
   From: [email-masked] (Chuck Koelbel)

OK, sorry.  I'll put any further discussion there.

   Just my two cents...

						   Chuck Koelbel

Thanks for giving me your take on this, Chuck.  I knew Carol Munroe of TMC
is on the standards committee, but not (until a few minutes ago) that she
is also on a group looking at these very issues.  I'll discuss it with her.

Doug