Bill NITZBERG:

Future of Message Passing

Today:

• PVM
• MPICH, LAM MPI, CHIMP, NEC MPI, Sun MPI, HP MPI, ...

But, commercial scientific computing is "bad business"
(Vendors will make more money supporting Disney, Wall Street, and Oracle than supporting scientific computing.)

==> We'll eventually be stuck with free software.

Good News: Free software is really good!

What about MPI-3 and PVM 4?

• PVM is obsolete; no one will use PVM anymore . . .

  . . . Just like Fortran became obsolete with the introduction of "better" languages

• If MPI is to be a success, there must be an MPI-3!

  . . . Standards that don't evolve, die.

• What might be in MPI-3/4/... ?
  • It'll probably support different applications
    (Disney, Oracle, ...)
    
  • Better integration with other software
    (Job Queuing System, authentication, ...)
    
  • Standardization of common library interfaces a la the C standard library