The OpenMP Birds-of-a-Feather session at SC08 was very well attended. The room was full to overflowing, with approximately 60-80 people. while OpenMP had BOFs at SC in prior years, this is actually the first year that OpenMP has had a Booth on the Exhibitor floor as well.
The BOF had many elements, including what is new in OpenMP 3.0. They were:
1. Welcome and summary of ARB news
- 5 mins
- Larry Meadows
2. The three greatest things about OpenMP 3.0 and the three most
important things left out of OpenMP 3.0
- 15 mins
- Tim Mattson
3. Tasking
- 10 to 15 mins
- Alex Duran
4. Extending the OpenMP profiling API for OpenMP 3.0
- 10 to 15 mins
- Oleg Mazurov
5. Announcements:
- 5 mins total
- IWOMP'09 announcement - Matthias Mueller
- OpenMP book examples - Ruud van der Pas
6. Panel "How to kill OpenMP by 2011"
- 35 mins
- Moderator:
Larry Meadows
- Panelists:
Tim Mattson
Bronis de Supinski
Christian Terboven
Jesus Labarta
7. Wrap up
- 5 mins
- Larry Meadows
For a description, you can find lots of detail here, including a downloadable summary card of the 3.0 Specification.
http://openmp.org/
I met a number of people during my afternoon session manning the booth on Wednesday 2-6 pm, including one of the original founder of OpenMP, an instructor on using OpenMP in graduate courses as well as a consultant, among many others. I invite them all to drop me a note here so we can continue our discussion.
One thing that was surprising to many folks was the many compilers that already have 3.0 implementation, despite the specification ratifying only in May 2008. The companies with 3.0 implementation includes IBM, Sun, PGI, and soon Intel. Note I am just reading this from the net and have no insight into other company's or even my own company's release schedule. GNU should have something by 4.4. Same disclaimer.
One thing that happened at the OpenMP BOF was a panel discussion on How to Kill OpenMP by 2012. This is kind of a fun session, especially at the end of a long day to not take yourself too seriously. The point is to showcase all the wrong ways in spreading a de-facto standard.
I have had some experience working with language designs through my various roles as standard rep, and compiler writer. So I thought I would give my $0.02 here on How to Kill OpenMP by 2012:
10. Don't implement the specification as stated.
9. Make it impossible to nail down ambiguities by having no way of addressing defects.
8. Ignore the user forum or suggestions
7. Add everyone's favorite feature, no matter how marginally useful.
6. Make the process as non-transparent as possible, so no one knows when you are ratifying, or even what you are doing.
5. Debate endlessly, on anything, not necessarily having anything to do with the language.
4. Design a feature as completely as possible before releasing it
3. Make no concession when taking a stance on objecting to someone's feature.
2. Form close-nit elitist groups and follow the NIH syndrome.
1. Don't organize any meetings, and when there are meetings, don't follow any rules.
Seriously, I have not found this to be a problem in any of the committees that I am a part of. Otherwise, we would not have made any progress. But we can always do better.
Parallel and Multi-Core Computing with C/C++
5 Posts tagged with the supercomputing tag
I should include an obligatory photo of the OpenMP Booth with our CEO Larry Meadows. Many members worked tirelessly, especially Larry at making sure the Booth was put up, taken down and staffed properly.
We also met many people who specifically dropped by to see what was going on, in this first year where we had a booth.
Many Thanks.
Hi, all. This is Michael Wong. I am at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, commonly called SC 08, courtesy of IBM
http://sc08.supercomputing.org/
I am specifically here to participate in the OpenMP sessions, where we have a booth, a BOF, and other discussion panels.
Over the next few posts, I hope to bring you some of the exciting events that are going on at this conference.
Looking at the program, there are a number of sessions aimed at Parallel Computing. If there are sessions you would like me to report from, drop me a note through this post and I can see what I can do.
On the flight down, let me just say that the last direct flight from Toronto (where I come from) to Austin was like a reunion of technologists as nearly everyone on the plane was attending SC 08. I recognized people from almost every software/hardware company that is active in this area. It was an interesting high-tech flight.
Normally, there is no direct flight from Toronto to Austin, and it takes multiple stops to get here. I am sure they didn't put together a direct flight just for us for SC 08.
(Actually, I learned on the plane that the direct flight started a year ago by Air Canada!)
Parallel and Multi-Core Computing with C/C++
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