04 (Материалы к экзамену)

Newsgroups: comp.parallel,comp.sys.super

From: eugene@sally.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)

Reply-To: eugene@george.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)

Subject: [l/m 10/22/97] group history/glossary comp.parallel (4/28) FAQ

Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

Date: 4 Mar 1998 13:03:14 GMT

Message-ID: <6djjei$1kt$1@cnn.nas.nasa.gov>

Archive-Name: superpar-faq

Last-modified: 22 Oct 1997

4Comp.parallel news group history, glossary, etc.

6parlib

8comp.parallel group dynamics

10Related news groups, archives and references

12

14

16

18Supercomputing and Crayisms

20IBM and Amdahl

22Grand challenges and HPCC

24Suggested (required) readings

26Dead computer architecture society

28Dedications

2Introduction and Table of Contents and justification

News group history

==================

Comp.parallel began as a mailing list specifically for

Floating Point Systems T-series hypercubes in the late 1980s by

"Steve" Stevenson at Clemson University. Later, the news group was

gatewayed (originally) as comp.hypercube. About six months into it,

someone suggested that the news group be all parallel stuff.

That's when it was changed (by democratic vote, to be sure) to the

moderated Usenet group comp.parallel.

Comp.parallel distinguished itself as one of the better Usenet groups

with a high "signal to noise" posting ratio.

Prior to comp.parallel, parallel and supercomputing were discussed in

the unmoderated Usenet group comp.arch (poor signal to noise ratio).

[aka high performance computing]

I forget (personally) the discussion which went along with the creation of

comp.sys.super and comp.unix.cray. It is enough to say that "it happened."

Comp.sys.super started as part of the "Great Usenet Reorganization"

(circa 1986/7).

C.s.s. was just seen as part of the existing sliding scale of

computer performance (from micros to supers).

Minicomputers (16-bit LSI machines) started disappearing about this time.

Where's the charter?

====================

It's going to be substituted here.

What's okay to post here?

=========================

Most anything relating parallel computing (comp.parallel) or

supercomputing (comp.sys.super, but unmoderated). Additionally, one

typically posts opinions about policy as relating to running the news group

(i.e., news group maintenance). Largely, it is up to the moderator in

comp.parallel to decide what ultimately propagates (in addition to the

usual propagation problems [What? you expect news to be propagated reliabily?

I have bridge to sell and some land in Florida which is occasionally

above water.]).

We are not here to hold your hand. Read and understand the netiquette posts

in groups such as news.announce.newusers (or de.newusers or similar groups).

Netiquette != etiquette.

Netiquette ~= etiquette.

Netiquette not = etiquette.

NETIQUETTE .NE. ETIQUETTE.

Avoid second and third degree flames: no pyramid posts or sympathy card calls.

Sure some one might be dying, but that's more appropriate in other groups.

We have posted obits and funeral notices (e.g., Sid Fernbach, Dan Slotnick).

No spam. We will stop spam especially cross-posted spam.

Current (1996) SPAM count to (comp.parallel): growing.

Current (1996) SPAM count to (comp.sys.super): more than c.p.

The spam count is the number of attempts to spam the group which get

blocked by moderation.

One more note:

Good jokes are always appreciated. Is it Monday?

GOOD JOKES.

Old joke (net.arch: 1984) with many variants:

In the 21st Century, we will have greater than Cray-1 power

with massive memories and huge disks, easily carryable under the arm

and costing less than $3000, and the first thing the user asks:

"Is it PC compatible?"

Guidance on advertising:

------------------------

Keep it short and small. This means: post-docs, employment, products, etc.

Don't post them too frequently.

What's okay to cross-post here?

-------------------------------

Your moderators are in communication with other moderators.

Currently, if you cross-post to two or more moderated news groups,

a single moderator can approve or cancel such an article.

Mutual agreements for automatic cross-post approval have been

negiotated with:

comp.compilers

comp.os.research

comp.research.japan

news.announce.conferences (moderator must email announcement to n.a.c.

moderator)

Pending

comp.doc.techreports

You are free to separately dual post (this isn't a cross-post) to

those moderated news groups.

Group Specific Glossary

=======================

Q: What does PRAM stand for?

Confused by acronyms?

---------------------

http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/acro .html

The following are noted but not endorsed (other name collisions possible):

Frequent acronyms:

ICPP:International Conference on Parallel Processing

ICDCS IDCS DCS:International Conference on Distributed Computer Systems

ISCA:International Symposium on Computer Architecture

MIN:Multistage Interconnection Network

ACM && IEEE/CS:two professional computer societies

ACM: the one with the SIGs, IEEE: the one with the technical commitees

CCC:Cray Computer Corporation (defunct)

CRI:Cray Research Inc. (SGI div.)

CDC:Centers for Disease Control and prevention

Control Data Corporation (defunct)

CDS:Control Data Services

DMM:

DMP:

DMMP DMC: Distributed Memory Multi-Processor/Computer

DMMC:Distributed Memory Multiprocessor Conference (aka Hypercube Conference)

ERA:Engineering Research Associates

ETA:nothing or Engineering Technology Associates (depending who you talk to)

ASC:Texas Instruments Advanced Scientific Computer (real old)

ASCI:Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative

ASPLOS: Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems

IPPS International Parallel Processing Symposium

JPDC Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing

MIDAS:Don't use. Too many MIDASes in the world.

MIP(S):Meaningless Indicators of Performance, also MFLOPS, GFLOPS, TFLOPS,

PFLOPS, (also substitute IPS and LIPS (logical inferences) for FLOPS

NDA:Non-disclosure Agreement

POPL:Principles of Programming Languages

POPP PPOPP PPoPP: Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming

HPF:High Performance Fortran (a parallel Fortran dialect)

MPI:Message Passing Interface (also see PVM)

PVM:Parallel Virtual Machine (clusters/networks of workstations)

also see MPI

Parallel "shared" Virtual Memory [Not the same as the other PVM]

SC'xx:Supercomputing'xx (a conference, not to be confused with the journal)

SGI:Silicon Graphics, Inc.

SUN:Stanford Unversity Network

SOSP:Symposium on Operating Systems Principals

SPDC:Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing

SPAA:Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures

TOC/ToC: IEEE Transactions on Computers

Table of Contents

TOCS: ACM Transactions on Computer Systems

TPDS/PDS: Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems,

Partitioned Data Set

TSE: Transactions on Software Engineering

Pascal && Unix:They aren't acronyms.

You can suggest others.....

We have dozens of others, we are not encouraging their use.

This is a list of last resort.

While people use these macros in processors like bibTeX, many interdisciplinary

applications people reading these groups are clueless. USE THE COMPLETE