The First Three Years of the Parallel Tools Consortium -- A Review

The Parallel Tools Consortium (or PTOOLS) was established in late 1993 in response to concerns that effective parallel tool development requires more input from the user community. The group consists of real users and real developers who actually talk to each other and who are completing the development of 100% user-specified tools. We have found that developers -- some from academia, others from the major HPC vendors (H-P/Convex, IBM, Intel, Meiko, SGI/Cray Research, etc.) and the government -- are very open to end-users' needs and opinions. The main activities of PTOOLS include the PTOOLS Annual Meeting and various sponsored projects.