[knepley]

It is often unhelpful when people who have "never touched" a piece of software comment on it. If you had touched ScaLAPACK or Elemental, you would realize that the algorithmic know-how and performance engineering from ScaLAPACK has been absorbed into Elemental. However, ScaLAPACK was being hampered by the conscious decision to maintain interface compatibility with LAPACK. One of the most valuable things about Elemental is that it can dispense with this antiquated API. Moreover, Elemental has a modern configure and build system, I/O support, and a vibrant development community. I would recommend that you investigate the community resources to satisfy your strong curiosity in this area.