Subject: Names for communicator objects

From: [email-masked] (David Walker)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 14:21:01 -0400

Has anyone come up with sensible names for communicator objects. At the last
MPI meeting they were called floopy, bongo, and bingo. I suggest they be 
called C1, C2, and C3 communicators instead.

David
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From: [email-masked] (David Walker)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 14:43:07 -0400

If you're going to use long names like inter-group-communicator,
intra-group-communication, and ??? (how about no-group-communicator), at
least make sure they can be shortened to distinct acronyms.

I think it is not too much to ask people to remember that C1, C2, and C3 stand 
for the three communicators in increasing order of complexity. 
"Inter" and "intra" will be a problem because there will be a class of people
who don't remember that the former is Latin for "between", and the latter is
Latin for "within." Also if you're listening to a talk or squinting at someones
illegible viewgraphs you might not discern the distinction.

David

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From: Tony Skjellum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 93 13:29:47 CDT

We have sensible names for these things.
It is part of the proposal X rewrite

The highest level would be inter-group-communicator, the next lowest
is intra-group-communication, and I am not sure what the lowest
should be (will review notes).

C1, C2, C3 do not contain enough semantic information to be helpful,
to my mind...

- Tony

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 93 13:28:56 PDT

> C1, C2, C3 do not contain enough semantic information to be helpful,

I share David's concerns about the subtle difference between
"inter" and "intra", and likewise Tony's about "C1" etc not
being mnemonic.

How about "G0", "G1", and "G2", for both level of complexity
and the number of groups involved?

--Rik

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[email-masked] (alias 'd39135')   Rik Littlefield
Tel: 509-375-3927                         Pacific Northwest Lab, MS K1-87
Fax: 509-375-6631                         P.O.Box 999, Richland, WA  99352

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From: Tony Skjellum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 93 17:26:36 CDT

I would suggest GRP0, GRP1, GRP2, to distinguish between GRIDS
(eg, synonym for virtual topologies) versus GROUPS.
- Tony

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 93 13:28:56 PDT

--Rik

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From: L J Clarke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 93 11:03:35 BST

Well, to pitch in my penny, I had already suggested some kind of name
for the two simplest communicator objects in a previous letter. Well,
never mind, because I am composing a letter which, among other things,
suggests that:

1) The first two ones are called an "intracommunicator" object, which is
composed of a context and a group (possibly null group). 

2) The third one is called an "intercommunicator" object, which is
composed of two intracommunicator objects. 

I understand the point Dave makes about missing the difference between
"er" and "ra" embedded in the string "inxxcommunicator".  I don't rate
it as importantly as Dave, but that's just my opinion.  I would have
thought that few enough people educated enough to come into contact with
this MPI stuff would not know the difference between the English prefix
"intra" and the English prefix "inter" --- I do believe I understood
this before leaving high school and my English education was rather
poor, and my school never did teach Latin (it did teach Russian :-). 

Okay, so this is just my opinion, but I really don't think that
enumerating the objects is very helpful to the user.  If we want to make
up concise short names, so users have less to type (which of course is
irrelevant to me as I really don't mind typing, as you may have noticed,
and at any rate my editor can type the long things for me :-), then imho
they really should convey a bit more than just groups.

How about ...

RACOM - intRACOMmunicator - is Floopy and Bongo as above.
ERCOM - intERCOMmunicator - is Bingo as above.

Or even ...

ACOM - intrACOMmunicator - is Floopy and Bongo as above.
ECOM - intErCOMmunicator - is Bingo as above.

Or along the cryptic line of thinking ...

CG   - ContextGroup      - is Floopy and Bongo.
CGG  - ContextGroupGroup - is Bingo.

Regards
Lyndon

> >From [email-masked] Mon Apr 19 15:36:10 1993
> X-Resent-To: [email-masked] ; Mon, 19 Apr 1993 16:35:20 EDT
> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 93 13:28:56 PDT
> From: [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: Names for communicator objects
> To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked]
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         /--------------------------------------------------------\
    e||) | Lyndon J Clarke    Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre | e||) 
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