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		     B O S T O N   U N I V E R S I T Y
                                       
			Computer Science Department
                                       
			    C O L L O Q U I U M
                                       
			 Friday, October 18, 1996
                                       
				  3:00 pm
                                       
		 (Coffee served at 2:30 pm, Room MCS 137)

			       Room MCS B46

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				 HPF-PETSc

			      Donna Bergmark
			   Cornell Theory Center
			  Frank H.T. Rhodes Hall
			    Cornell University
			   Ithaca, NY 14853-3801
			 http://www.tc.cornell.edu

Abstract

PETSc is a library of routines and data structures for solving PDE's in
parallel on high performance computers, with emphasis on iterative
techniques for sparse matrices.  It is written in C in object-oriented
programming style, and provides a number of different levels of
abstraction to the user.  It runs over MPI.

Our project, HPF-PETSc, is to determine the extent to which such a
library can be used by an HPF programmer.  In other words, can we
bridge the object-oriented and the data parallel worlds of PETSc and
HPF?  Can we combine OOPs (object oriented programs) with DPPs (data
parallel programs)?

The major challenge is to merge HPF's "global" view of the application
with PETSc's "node local" view.  But other challenges abound.  Does it
make sense to mix a parallel program (e.g. written in HPF) with a
parallel subroutine library (e.g. PETSc, PESSL, ScaLAPAK)?  Will there
be a conflict in data structures? Are there problems calling C from
HPF? Finally, if one were to provide an interface module (in the F90
sense), what is the right level of abstraction?

This project was started at the Cornell Theory Center in May.  I will
discuss progress to date and what has been learned about providing HPF
"gasket-ware" to popular numerical libraries.

Donna Bergmark is the Leader of the Parallel Tools Team at the Cornell
Theory Center.

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For colloquium info, including directions, see http://www.cs.bu.edu/colloquium
     For more information contact Prof. David Yates <djy@cs.bu.edu>
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