ITC Research Computing Support Newsletter - May, 2001
This is the May, 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.
The Academic Computing Health Sciences (ACHS) News can be found at:
http://www.med.virginia.edu/achs/news/
Contents
The ITC Unix workstation lab in 102 Small Hall will be closing for
renovations on Friday, May 25 until sometime the week of June 18. The
102 Small Hall UnixLab renovations include improvements to the floor,
ceiling, lighting, and window treatments as well a new
consultant/printer work area.
In addition, when the lab re-opens in mid-June, the current Sun
Ultra-1s will be replaced with new Sun Ultra-10s with 440 Mhz
UtlraSparc-IIi CPUs with 2MB of L2 cache and 20 GB hard drives.
The Sun and SGI workstations in 102 Small Hall will be unavailable
during these renovations. For those needing to use a workstation
during this period there will be the following workstations in
E225 Thornton Hall lab: 4 Ultra 1s (Sun 15 to Sun 18),
5 Ultra 60s (Sun 20 to Sun 24, and Sun 28) as well as one SGI O2
(sgi-1). In addition, a SGI 02 workstation is also available
for use at the Research Computing Support Center in 244 Wilson Hall
during Center hours. The SGI O200s will continue to be available
remotely and a number of remote Suns will be made available also.
The remote Suns are called orange1.unix, orange2.unix
through orange6.unix, they consist of Ultra 10s and Sun Netra's
each with at least 512MB of memory.
To check the load on the various machines
you can use the webpage:
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~userv/usage.html
If you have concerns or questions about the renovations, please
contact Tim Tolson, Research Computing Support Manager, at 243-6592 or
e-mail TTolson@virginia.edu.
ITC has upgraded the Image Processing Toolbox of the technical computing
software Matlab from version 2.2 to version 3.0 on the server jeeves.itc for
the Unix platforms it supports (RS/6000, Sun, SGI, and Linux). The IP
Toolbox upgrade will available soon on the servers that support the public
PC Labs and classrooms. For users who have Matlab installed locally on their
Windows PC (95/98/NT/2000), the IP Toolbox version 3.0 is available for
download at,
www.itc.virginia.edu/research/matlab-install/toolbox/install_ip.html
This latest version of the Matlab Image Processing Toolbox includes new
tools for performing mathematical morphology operations on binary and
grayscale images, new functions for applying a variety of spatial
transformations to images and points, new functions for registering
(aligning) two images, new support for reading image data and metadata in
DICOM format, and more. Detailed descriptions of the latest enhancements as
well as general information about the IP Toolbox can be viewed at:
www.mathworks.com/products/whatsnew.shtml
www.mathworks.com/products/image/
Further information on how to access Matlab 6.0 from either a Unix
workstation or a PC, as well as help using Matlab, can be found on the
Research Computing Services Web page at,
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/matlab.html
There will be a special brownbag talk on the Matlab Image Processing
Toolbox, including the new features in version 3.0 at noon on Thursday, June
7 in the Research Computing Support Center, Wilson Hall 244.
Specific questions about the upgrade as well general questions concerning as
the use of Matlab should be directed to
res-consult@virginia.edu.
Join the members of the ITC Research Computing Support Group for our Summer
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.
- June 7th Matlab Image Processing Toolbox
This talk will provide an overview of the functionality available in
Matlab's Image Processing toolbox (see www.mathworks.com/products/image/
description/overview.shtml), with an emphasis on the new features
incorporated in version 3.0.
- June 20th Legion
Katherine Holcomb from the Computer Science department
will give a talk on Legion project. Legion is a
multi-year effort to design and build scalable distributed
Grid software. Legion provides the software "glue"
for seamless integration of distributed, heterogeneous
hardware and software components. Legion offers the
chance for researchers at UVa to access a large number
of processors through NPACI-net. Katherine will present
an overview of Legion as well as short demonstration of
how to use it. The Legion homepage is at
http://legion.virginia.edu/
- July 18th Maple
This talk will provide an introduction and overview of
Maple 6. Maple is technical software system for doing
symbolic and numeric computation. It has both a text-based and
graphical user interface, an extensible programming language,
and sophisticated 2-D and 3-D plotting utilities.
It also has word processing capabilities, export to HTML and
Latex, and connectivity to Excel, Matlab, and external
C-callable libraries.
PETSc (Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation) is
a suite of data structures and routines for the scalable (parallel)
solution of scientific applications modeled by partial differential
equations. It is developed by the Mathematics and Computer Science
Division at Argonne National Laboratory, the PETSc homepage is at
http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/
The PETSc software is installed in the directory
/contrib/products/petsc-2.1.0 on the SP2, to use the software it is
necessary to set the following environmental variables PETSC_DIR to
/contrib/products/petsc-2.1.0 and PETSC_ARCH to rs6000_sp.
Documentation on PETSc can be found at
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/petsc_docs/
If you have any problems with PETSc or need help getting started
please contact the Research Computing Support Group at
res-consult@virginia.edu
SAS is continually refining the current releases of its software. These
refinements result in "hot fixes" that solve known bugs with the
software. Hot Fixes address specific alert issues uncovered by
customers' applications that they report to SAS Institute.
To download the latest hot fixes for SAS 8.1, visit:
http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/hotfix.html
Current fixes address issues with Base Software Procedures PROC MEANS,
and PROC REPORT, as well as other procedures.
If you want, you can receive automatic notification when a new hot fix
becomes available by subscribing to the SAS Institute "tsnews" listserv.
Visit the following webpage to sign-up:
http://www.sas.com/service/techsup/news/tsnews.html
The two software packages Fortres 101 and ImageCast have new versions
available. Fortres 101 is PC security software that allows one to
lockdown the Windows desktop. It can restrict access to any file,
folder, or file type or block specific applications from running.
Fortres 101 is now at version 4.1B492. ImageCast is a PC management
utility that allows you to deploy images and maintain PCs taking
advantage of hard-disk cloning technology. ImageCast is now at version
4.5
Previously UVa users could download versions of these programs from
their respective makers' web sites and then request the UVa license
authorization files. This method no longer works. Both of these
packages will now be distributed exclusively through the Research
Computing Support Center (RCSC) in room 244, Wilson Hall.
In order to get UVa licensed versions of Fortres 101 or ImageCast, you
must get the CD from the RCSC in room 244 Wilson Hall. The RCSC is open
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday.
License codes will be e-mailed to you when you pick up the CD or upon
e-mail request to
res-consult@virginia.edu
The highly successful Research Computing Support Task Force (RCTF)
rendered its Final Report
(available at:
www.itc.virginia.edu/rctf/finalreport.html
The RCTF recommended three topics for further analysis, discussion and
recommendations. These are: high performance computing; mass storage;
and a center for advanced computational support. Three ad hoc
committees to examine the implementation issues and make recommendations
have been formed and are currently meeting with a goal of making
recommendations by early next month (June). Details about the charge
and scope of the three committees follows.
The recommendations from the RCTF to the committee for a center for
advanced computational support were:
- Two immediate aims of the center should be to provide advanced
computing expertise for the support of and collaboration in
project-based, discipline-specific research and scholarly computing,
and to establish liaisons with the national computing centers that can
promote faculty use of these facilities.
- Center resources might be allocated through a peer-review grant
application process, with a cost-sharing mechanism via departments or
researchers to stimulate participation by faculty and center staff.
Providing support for departments with limited research funds will
require particular attention.
The recommendations for the mass storage committee from the RCTF were
to:
- Develop a mass storage strategy that identifies storage alternatives
and recommended best practices for data storage and backup.
- Investigate and recommend data management systems appropriate for
high-capacity storage.
- Determine the extent to which the present ITC Hierarchical Storage
Management system can accommodate the needs of researchers.
- Explore the role of the Legion system in addressing mass storage and
data management needs.
- Develop recommendations for data backup strategies that do not
negatively impact network bandwidth.
The RCTF recommendations regarding High Performance Computing were:
- Continue support of institution-based, medium-scale high-performance
computing by convening an ad hoc panel of technical experts and involved
researchers to identify and acquire appropriate successors to the IBM
SP, one of which should include a parallel system.
If you have any concerns or questions, or would like to provide input to
any of these committees, please contact Tim Tolson, Research Computing
Support Manager at 243-6592 or e-mail
TTolson@virginia.edu.
On May 14 we received notice from Waterloo Maple, Inc.
that the Windows standalone license file for Maple 6.x will
expire in error as of June 30, 2001.
We have received an apology and a new license file from
Maple which is perpetual along with instructions for
installation.
Maple 6.x Windows standalone users should email
res-consult@virginia.edu in order to receive an updated
license file.
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