ITC Research Computing Support Newsletter - March, 2001

This is the March, 2001 newsletter of the ITC Research Computing Support Group. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the information presented here please contact the ITC Research Computing Support Group via e-mail to res-consult@virginia.edu, or at the Research Computing Support Center, 244 Wilson Hall, 243-8800. The Research Computing Support Center is open 9AM-5PM, Monday through Friday.

Contents

Research Computing SIG Formed

Researchers have unusual computing needs. They use specialized software, tweak their computers to get the last smidgen of performance, write code in odd languages, read data from strange hardware, and have HUGE data files. If you provide technical support for researchers, you may be interested in the Research Computing Special Interest Group (SIG).

Initially, this SIG is intended to be a forum where system administrators can exchange ideas that they've found useful in our individual departments, and brainstorm new solutions for new problems (or pesky old ones). The hope is that it will evolve into an organization that involves both researchers and technical support people, and provides them with opportunites to discuss their work with their counterparts around the University.

The first meeting of the Research Computing SIG will be held on Wednesday, March 21 at 3:00pm in room 120 of the Physics Building. For more information, see:

http://www.itc.virginia.edu/lsp/2001/0272.html

If you'd like more information, or if you'd like to subscribe to the Research Computing SIG mailing list, please contact Bryan Wright (bryan@virginia.edu).

ITC Budget Priorities for 2001-2002

Every year ITC presents its projects and budget priorities for the upcoming year for review and input from the University commmunity. Whether or not you were able to attend ITC's Briefing Session on March 9, you can provide input regarding priorities about the projects you think ITC should undertake for the coming year.

In the past it has been valuable to receive faculty, staff, and student input and factor it into our decision making process. We encourage you to participate in this year's process and send us your rankings.

You can view the list (including links to the full project proposals) at:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/genmgr/org/projects/01-02-projects/01-02-project-summary-public.html

You can provide your input by downloading the list of proposed projects from the web site (an Excel spreadsheet). Enter your rankings in the first column, and then send the spreadsheet back to Alice Howard (agh@virginia.edu) via e-mail. Or you can print the list from the web site, write in your rankings, and then mail it to Alice Howard, ITC-Wilson, Box 400779, Wilson Hall.

In either case, please rank the projects with a 1, 3, or 5 -- where 5 is "most important" and 1 is "least important", giving a maximum of 14 5's, 14 3's, and 14 1's. (NOTES: (1) the first four projects on the list are to be included in your rankings -- although these are institutional-wide initiatives that we think should be funded by UVA, we'd like to know how they rank in your priorities; (2) a vote for "option b" of a project is a vote for the "high-end" option and therefore a vote to fund both option a and option b.)

We need to receive your rankings by March 20, 2001.

If you have questions, you can phone or send email to Alice Howard (243-6605, agh@virginia.edu).

Spring Brownbag Series at the Research Computing Support Center

Join the members of the ITC Research Computing Support Group for our Spring 2001 Brownbag Series. Each brownbag will be held at 12 noon at the Research Computing Support Center (244 Wilson Hall), usually on the third Wednesday of the month. Bring your lunch, we'll supply the drinks and cookies.

NPACI workshop on Parallel Computing

Researchers at UVa have access to some of the most powerful computers in the world through the NPACI program, NPACI resources include the most powerful computer in the world for non-classfied research, BlueHorizon. Details of NPACI machines and how to apply for resources can be found at:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/npaci.html

NPACI are running a workshop on parallel computing on the 29th and 30th of March at the University of Texas. Details of the workshop can be found at the NPACI Training webpage
http://www.npaci.edu/Training/

Totalview Parallel Debugger Installed

Totalview is a very powerful graphical debugger that can be use to debug codes that use MPI, OpenMP and threads. The debugger allows the user to step through their code line by line on seperate machines at the same time. Totalview can be used with MPICH a freely available implementation of MPI or the vendor specific MPI libraries.
Currently Totalview is installed for IBM AIX, Sun Solaris and SGI IRIX machines at the University, it is hoped that the University will acquire a license for Totalview on Linux soon. The Totalview webpage at UVa is at:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/totalview/totalview.html

If you have any questions on using Totalview please e-mail res-consult@virginia.edu.

Windows Maple Version 6.02 Upgrade Available Online

Maple versions 6 and 6.01 for Windows can now be upgraded to version 6.02 by first downloading Maple6Installer.exe from the Maple site at:
http://www.maplesoft.com/support/Downloads/index.html

To obtain the necessary serial number for this upgrade, e-mail your request to res-consult@virginia.edu.
Version 6.02 corrects certain bugs demonstrated in version 6.0 under certain integer parsing conditions and when invoking the JacobiSN function.
Several display problems that occurred in earlier 6.x Windows versions are also corrected in version 6.02. According to the web site,
"Maple 6.02 provides support for Windows ME and Mac OS 9.1, and addresses issues related to running Japanese Windows. In addition, it provides support for a wider range of video cards and display settings to address problems related to displaying and printing plots using OpenGL."

Maple 6.01 Installed and Available for Unix Platform

ITC has recently upgraded the technical computing software Maple 6 to Maple 6.01 on the Unix systems that ITC supports (RS/6000, SUN, SGI, and Linux) and it is available in the public PC labs. To find out more about Maple at UVa visit:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/maple.html .

Mathematica Upgraded to Version 4.1

The technical computing software Mathematica has been upgraded to version 4.1 on all of ITC's Unix machines (RS/6000, Sun, SGI, and Linux) as well as those departmental machines mounting Mathematica from the ITC Unix server jeeves.itc.virignia.edu.

The list of major improvements are:

A detailed description of these enhancements can be found at the URL, http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/newin41/

Further information on how to access Mathematica 4.1, as well as help using Mathematica, can be found on the Research Computing Services Web page at http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/mathematica.html
Specific questions about the upgrade as well general questions concerning as the use of Matlab should be directed to res-consult@virginia.edu.

Need More Disk Space?

Do you need large disk space to hold files for long term storage? The HSM facility is a large tape robot that can be used to store large amounts of data, the current quota is 5 GB of space for faculty and staff with up to 20 GB on request. The system is configured to appear like a normal file system that is on disk, the only difference is that the HSM may occasionally be slower at returning your files. For more details on the HSM see the HSM homepage:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/hsm.html

To request space on the HSM e-mail res-consult@virginia.edu with the following information: your UVa computing ID, your e-mail address, your UVa affiliation (faculty, staff, graduate student, etc) and the name of the Unix system from which you wish to use your HSM directory. The HSM directory is accessible from IBM-compatible PCs and Macintosh computers as well.

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