Lehr- und Forschungseinheit Informatik X
Lehrstuhl für Rechnertechnik und Rechnerorganisation/ Parallelrechner
Prof. Dr. A. Bode

What is OMIS?

OMIS is the definition of a standard interface between various types of run-time tools for parallel and distributed systems and the systems themselves.

Speaking of run-time tools we mean debuggers, performance analyzers, program flow and result visualizers, load and resource management systems etc.

These tools require means for observation and manipulation of the execution of parallel programs. Different tools need similar sets of information and manipulation facilities. These facilities are called monitoring systems and must be implemented for a large variety of target systems. A monitoring system with a standardized interface will allow us to quickly supply various target systems with the same powerful set of tools.

OMIS is exactly the definition of such an interface. It allows tool developers to attach new tools to already existing implementations of OMIS compliant monitoring systems on different target architectures. An OMIS compliant monitoring system can concurrently serve several compliant tools, thus offering a means for tool interoperability. Universality with respect to new tool environments is guaranteed by OMIS' intrinsic mechanisms of extendibility.

We have designed and are currently implementing an OMIS compliant monitoring system (OCM) for the PVM programming model running on networks of workstations.

All software products being developed within the framework of the OMIS/OCM project at Lehrstuhl für Rechnertechnik und Rechnerorganisation (LRR-TUM) will be available under GNU license terms.

Why do we need such an approach?

Unified tool environments and portability
Currently, tool environments exist for individual target architectures only. A change of the target forces the programers to get accustomed to new tools.
Having a set of tools for an OMIS compliant monitoring system we immediately have the same tools available after having ported the monitoring system to another target machine. To sum it up: Having OMIS the effort of bringing n tools to m systems will be reduced from n*m to n+m.
Tool interoperability
Nowadays, tools do not interoperate, even if provided by the same developers. One reason lies in different monitoring systems being integrated into the parallel system. Their interfaces and internal mechanisms are incompatible to each other and allow only to connect one vendor specific tool.
With OMIS we will have a well defined monitoring interface being identical for all tools. Once an OMIS compliant monitoring system is implemented for a specific environment, tool developers can independently design tools which can be used simultaneously. This is a decisive prerequisite for tools being able to interoperate.

Who are the persons behind the project?

The OMIS project is a joint effort of Thomas Ludwig, Roland Wismüller, Michael Oberhuber, Jörg Trinitis and Arndt Bode from the Lehrstuhl für Rechnertechnik und Rechnerorganisation (LRR) at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and Vaidy Sunderam from the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. It has been started in summer 1995.

The main conceptual work is currently done at LRR-TUM in a group of 3 researchers and several students being involved.

What about further infomation?

Either read OMIS Version 2.0 as an HTML document or as a postscript document (size is 126 pages, 252 KByte). You can also get the document's BibTeX-entry.

You can also get copies of papers and slides about OMIS/OCM and older OMIS document versions.

We need your support!

Please, read the document and send any ideas, criticism etc. to omis@informatik.tu-muenchen.de or feel free to contact the people mentioned above directly.

As the standard should be powerful enough to be used by many people we are seriously interested to discuss our approach with other researchers.

Thomas Ludwig, 1997/08/07