PORTS

POrtable Run-Time System Consortium

Group Meeting: Feb 9, 1995

Pete Beckman, Moderator
Report by Pete Beckman and Suvas Vajracharya

Introduction

This is the report of the sixth meeting of the PORTS group. The first meeting took place at a round table (literally) at Supercomputing 93. This report, as well as other information about the PORTS group can be found at http://www.cs.uoregon/paracomp/ports. Pete Beckman moderated the meeting and Suvas Vajracharya took notes.

Attendees (alphabetically):

Pete Beckman (Indiana U)
Nikos Chrisochoides (NPAC, Syracuse U)
Peter Corbeth (IBM Watson)
David DiNucci (Nasa Ames)
Ian Foster (Argonne)
Hubertus Franke (IBM Watson )
Dennis Gannon (Indiana U)
Matt Haines (ICASE)
Paul Havlak (U of Maryland)
Jeff Hollingworth (U of Maryland)
Carl Kesselman (Caltech)
Chuck Koelbel (Rice)
Piyush Mehortra (ICASE)
Bernd Mohr (U of Oregon)
Richard Neves (U of Colorado)
Daniel Quinlan (LANL)
Michel Riviere (IMAG)
Allan Sussman (U of Maryland)
Suvas Vajracharya (U of Colorado)
Hans P. Zima (U of Vienna, ICASE)

Project Reports

There are currently many PORTS0 thread implementations. Go on the PORTS home page to find the specification, and list of implementations.

Discussion: Extending PORTS0

  • Timers

  • The group decided that before benchmarks for PORTS0 can be standardized and shared, PORTS0 must be extended (PORTS0 Version 1.1?) to include wall-clock timers. A simple vector of timers with operations such as start, stop, and clear was suggested. A mailing list of interested people was created.

    ports-timers@extreme.indiana.edu

    gannon@cs.indiana.edu
    beckman@cs.indiana.edu
    mohr@cs.uoregon.edu
    hollings@cs.umd.edu
    carl@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu
    itf@mcs.anl.gov
    pm@icase.edu
    haines@icase.edu
    frankeh@watson.ibm.com

    The group will agree on a timer interface quickly, and mail the interface to the larger ports group.

  • Benchmarks

  • Since there are several PORTS0 implementations, the group decided to develop standard benchmark and validation suites (after timers have been added to PORTS0). The benchmark suite will measure context switching, thread creation, etc. The mailing list

    ports-bench@extreme.indiana.edu

    carl@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu
    itf@mcs.anl.gov
    pm@icase.edu
    haines@icase.edu
    mohr@cs.uoregon.edu
    beckman@cs.indiana.edu
    gannon@cs.indiana.edu
    frankeh@watson.ibm.com
    nikos@npac.syr.edu

    was created to discuss and coordinate a standard benchmark code and methodology. The members will eventually produce a benchmark code and strict guidelines for collecting data with the benchmark.

  • Validation Suites

  • The group agreed that some simple validation tests would be a good way to "certify" that a PORTS0 implementation functioning properly. However the group decided this was not a high priority, and that the benchmark suite would make a reasonable validation until someone can develop a better one.

  • Future PORTS0 Implementations

  • Both the Convex Examplar and the Cray T3D were mentioned as parallel machines that do not yet have a PORTS0 interface.

    Discussion: "A PORTS1 Proposal"

    The group discussed a proposed extention to PORTS0, entitled A PORTS1 Proposal

    The proposal covered these areas:

  • Basic machine abstractions
  • Communication (RPC, MPI, Put/Get):
  • Remote Procedure Call
  • Clocks/Timers
  • Events

    There was plenty of discussion. No agreement was reached, but Timers/Clocks/Events was put at the top of the list of adgenda items, since it is in the critical path for thread benchmarks.

    Next Meeting:

    May 12th (evening) and 13th (all day) in Denver Colorado.

    Postscript:

    Many members of the group went out for snacks and beer at Bardo's ("The Largest Brewpub in the Western Hemisphere"). The run-time gurus tasted some interesting brews, including an Anaheim Chili beer, and an incredibly strong stout called Elvis. The grad students were handed the check, but failed to pay the entire tab.


    beckman@cs.indiana.edu