Add documentation for null engine and bp3 option for nvram

docs/user_guide/source/conf.py

@@ -138,7 +138,8 @@
     'engines/hdf5.rst',
     'engines/bp3.rst',
     'engines/sst.rst',
-    'engines/inline.rst'
+    'engines/inline.rst',
+    'engines/null.rst',
     # 'engines/engines.rst',
     # 'faq/faq.rst',
 ]

docs/user_guide/source/engines/bp3.rst

@@ -50,6 +50,8 @@ This engine allows the user to fine tune the buffering operations through the fo
 
 9. **SubStreams**: (MPI-only) users can select how many sub-streams (``M`` sub-files) are produced during a run, ranges between 1 and the number of mpi processes from ``MPI_Size`` (``N``), adios2 will internally aggregate data buffers (``N-to-M``) to output the required number of sub-files. If Substream is out of bounds it will pick either 1 (``SubStreams`` < ``1 -> N-to-1``) or ``N`` ((``SubStreams`` > ``N -> N-to-N``) and ADIOS2 will issue a WARNING message. Use for performance tuning.
 
+10. **Node-Local**: For distributed file system. Every writer process must make sure the .bp/ directory is created on the local file system. Required for using local disk/SSD/NVMe in a cluster.
+
 ==================== ===================== ===========================================================
  **Key**              **Value Format**      **Default** and Examples
 ==================== ===================== ===========================================================
@@ -62,6 +64,7 @@ This engine allows the user to fine tune the buffering operations through the fo
  BufferGrowthFactor   float > 1             **1.05**, 1.01, 1.5, 2
  FlushStepsCount      integer > 1           **1**, 5, 1000, 50000
  SubStreams           integer >= 1          **MPI_Size (N-to-N)**, ``MPI_Size``/2, ... , 2, (N-to-1) 1
+ Node-Local           string On/Off         **Off**, On
 ==================== ===================== ===========================================================
 
 

docs/user_guide/source/engines/engines.rst

@@ -23,3 +23,5 @@ Parameters are passed at:
 .. include:: dataman.rst
 .. include:: inline.rst
 .. include:: insitu_mpi.rst
+.. include:: null.rst
+.. include:: virtual_engines.rst

docs/user_guide/source/engines/null.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+****
+Null 
+****
+
+The ``Null`` Engine by-passes any heavy I/O operations that other Engines might potentially execute, for example, memory allocations, buffering, transport data movement. Calls to the Null engine would effectively return immediately without doing any effective operations.
+
+The overall goal is to provide a mechanism to isolate an application behavior without the ADIOS 2 footprint. Use this engine to have an idea of the overhead cost of using a certain ADIOS 2 Engine (similar to writing to `/dev/null`) in an application.

docs/user_guide/source/engines/virtual_engines.rst

@@ -8,9 +8,9 @@ The following I/O uses cases are supported by virtual engine names:
 
 1. ``File``: File I/O (Default engine).
 
-   This sets up the I/O for files. If the file name passed in Open() ends with ".bp", then the BP4 engine will be used.
+   This sets up the I/O for files. If the file name passed in Open() ends with ".bp", then the BP4 engine will be used starting in v2.5.0.
    If it ends with ".h5", the HDF5 engine will be used. For old .bp files (BP version 3 format), the BP3 engine 
-   will be used for reading. 
+   will be used for reading (v2.4.0 and below). 
 
 2. ``FileStream``: Online processing via files.
 
@@ -46,8 +46,7 @@ Virtual Engine Setups
 
 These are the actual settings in ADIOS when a virtual engine is selected. The parameters below can be modified before the Open call. 
 
-1. ``File``. Engine can be ``BP4`` or ``HDF5`` depending on file extension (".h5" for HDF5, otherwise always BP4), 
-    or it can be ``BP3`` in reading if the input file has an older BP version. 
+1. ``File``. Refer to the parameter settings for these engines of ``BP4``, ``BP3`` and ``HDF5`` engines earlier in this section. 
 
 2. ``FileStream``. The engine is ``BP4``. The parameters are set to: