PMIx Reference Implementation

• TODO: Coverity Scan Build Status

The very breadth of PMIx’s scope can present a challenge to adoption by SMS vendors and programming library developers. Accordingly, the PMIx community has developed and released a PMIx “reference implementation” containing a complete implementation of the PMIx standard, each release being tied directly to a corresponding revision level of the standard.

The reference implementation itself is not part of the PMIx standard, nor is its use in any way required. Any implementation that supports the defined APIs is perfectly acceptable, and some environments may choose to pursue that route. The reference code is provided solely for the following purposes:

• Validation of the standard. No proposed change and/or extension to the standard is accepted without an accompanying prototype implementation in the reference library. This ensures that the proposal has undergone at least some minimal level of scrutiny and testing before being considered.
• Ease of adoption. The PMIx reference library is designed to be particularly easy for resource managers (and the SMS in general) to adopt, thus facilitating a rapid uptake into that community for application portability. Both client and server libraries are included, along with reference examples of client usage and server-side integration. A list of supported environments and versions is provided here – please check regularly as the list is changing!

The reference implementation targets support for the Linux operating system. A reasonable effort is made to support all major, modern Linux distributions; however, validation is limited to the most recent 2-3 releases of RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Fedora, CentOS, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). In addition, development support is maintained for Mac OSX. Production support for vendor-specific operating systems is included as provided by the vendor.

More information on obtaining and building the reference implementation is available here.

PMIx Reference RunTime Environment (PRRTE)

• TODO: Coverity Scan Build Status

Similarly, the PMIx community has released a “Reference RunTime Environment” — i.e., a runtime environment containing the reference implementation and capable of operating within a host SMS. The reference RTE therefore provides an easy way of exploring PMIx capabilities and testing PMIx-based applications outside of a PMIx-enabled environment.

More information on obtaining and building the PMIx Reference RTE is available here

Developer’s Telecon

The PMIx developers meet weekly on Thursdays at noon US Pacific to discuss the standard, implementation issues, and release roadmap. The meeting is open to all interested parties. Meeting information is available here.

Working Group Meetings

• The OpenMP/MPI Working Group is currently taking a break while researchers investigate best paths forward. The results of the initial work was captured in an RFC that updated the PMIx v3 Standard