[Pympi-users] Re: Where should pyMPI be going????

[Pat M. <pat...@ll...>]

Peter Maxwell wrote:
 > I trust you'll get replies from real PyMPI users too.  All I can do is list the reasons why I wrote PyxMPI instead.  I wanted:

Thanks for the feedback!

>  - A simple OO interface: communicator.split(a); communicator.sum(A).
While pyMPI's is OO under the hood, the target was C/FORTRAN guys,
so OO gets second shrift to the procedural interface.  Its  nice to
see a purer one written from scratch.

>  - Summing over a distributed Numeric array without pickling.
I concentrated on portability, but this is too important to leave
out much longer.  My internal customer did very little of this, so
it wasn't important enough to put in up front.  My external audience
is interested though ;-)

>  - An unpatched python.  Maybe if I was using MPICH rather than LAM I would have
>    accepted that it isn't possible in general, but I was used to PyPar, which works fine
>    (on LAM anyway) without patching the interpreter.
I've put in an experimental "mpi.so", but for full portability I will
need to support the external binary.  One of our large systems refuses
to do an MPI launch on code that is not hard-linked against the
communications library [sigh].

>  - Preferably a GPL compatible license - your "Notification of Commercial Use"
>    clause seems to rule that out.
Well, I was happy to get any Open Source license out of my employer at the
time.  We are now doing some LGPL releases, but someone had to pave the way
for that.  I'm glad there are completely unencumbered tools out there
though I don't think anybody has "notified" the lab about comercial
use of pyMPI.

 > excuse to see what I could do with Pyrex,
I've been wanting to play with pyrex for a while... I envy you!

 > PyxMPI mow meets the needs of the application for which it was written
For a long time pyMPI was frozen for exactly the same reason.  It did
everything it needed to do and little more.  Then I noticed how
many people were downloading it!  As now I am only peripherally
supporting that original project, I am freer to make the tool
more general.

Cheers and thanks!

Pat

-- 
Pat Miller | (925) 423-0309 | http://www.llnl.gov/CASC/people/pmiller

What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life.  -- Bertrand
Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)