Next iteration of MPI standard set

Torsten Hoefler posts on his blog that the MPI standard is now fixed

We just finished all voting on the last MPI-2.2 tickets! This means that MPI-2.2 is fixed now, no changes are possible. The remaining work is ismply to merge the accepted tickets into the final draft that will be voted on next time. Everything (substantial) that I proposed made it in with a reasonable quorum. The new graph topology interface was nicely accepted this time (I think I explained it better and I presented an optimized implementation). However, other tickets didn’t go that smooth. The process seems very interesting from a social perspective (the way we vote has a substantial impact on the results etc.).

Torsten goes on to talk about some of the tickets that he found interesting in the process. A couple highlights from his list

MPI_Request_free bad advice to users – I personally think that MPI_Request_free is dangerous (especially in the context of threads) and does not provide much to the user. But we can’t get rid of it. … so let’s discourage users to use it! – PASSED!

Deprecate the C++ bindings – that’s funny, isn’t it? But look at the current C++ bindings, they’re nothing more then pimped C bindings and only create problems. Real C++ programmers would use Boot.MPI (which internally uses the C bindings ), right? – PASSED (even though I voted against it )

Torsten’s post provides an interesting window into the sausage-making process of evolving a standard. It’s a fun read.