Introducing OpenSHMEM: SHMEM for the PGAS community

The OpenSHMEM community would like to announce a new effort to standardize SHMEM, a communications library that uses one-sided communication and utilizes a partitioned global address space. OpenSHMEM is an effort to bring together a variety of SHMEM and SHMEM-like implementations into an open standard using a community-driven model. By creating an open-source specification and reference implementation of OpenSHMEM, there will be a wider availability of a PGAS library model on current and future architectures. In addition, the availability of an OpenSHMEM model will enable the development of performance and validation tools. We propose an OpenSHMEM specification to help tie together a number of divergent implementations of SHMEM that are currently available. To support an existing and growing user community, we will develop the OpenSHMEM web presence, including a community wiki and training material, and face-to-face interaction, including workshops and conference participation.