Parallel Python

[Nick Maclaren]

In article <mailman.2545.1168463082.32031.python-list at python.org>,
"Carl J. Van Arsdall" <cvanarsdall at mvista.com> writes:
|> 
|> Just as something to note, but many HPC applications will use a 
|> combination of both MPI and threading (OpenMP usually, as for the 
|> underlying thread implementation i don't have much to say).  Its 
|> interesting to see on this message board this huge "anti-threading" 
|> mindset, but the HPC community seems to be happy using a little of both 
|> depending on their application and the topology of their parallel 
|> machine.  Although if I was doing HPC applications, I probably would not 
|> choose to use Python but I would write things in C or FORTRAN. 

That is a commonly quoted myth.

Some of the ASCI community did that, but even they have backed off
to a great extent.  Such code is damn near impossible to debug, let
alone tune.  To the best of my knowledge, no non-ASCI application
has ever done that, except for virtuosity.  I have several times
asked claimants to name some examples of code that does that and is
used in the general research community, and have so far never had a
response.

I managed the second-largest HPC system in UK academia for a decade,
ending less than a year ago, incidentally, and was and am fairly well
in touch with what is going on in HPC world-wide.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.