This is the November, 2000 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 email 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.
Join the members of the ITC Research Computing Support Group for our Fall 2000 Brownbag Series. Each brownbag will be held at 12 noon at the Research Computing Support Center (244 Wilson Hall). Bring your lunch, we'll supply the drinks, snacks, and cookies.
If you need additional information, contact the Research Computing Support Group at res-consult@virginia.edu or call the Research Computing Support Center at 243-8800.
The compilers for Sun workstations and servers have recently been upgraded from Sun Workshop 4.2 to Sun Workshop 5.0. According to Sun and from some simple tests the performance of code compiled with the new compiler should be 30% better than with the old compiler. The compilers can be found in /opt/SUNWspro/bin, to check the version of a compiler on a Sun machine use
f77 -V
The best general optimization flag to use with the Sun compilers is "-fast", eg.
f77 -fast -o test.x test.f
The manpages for the compilers can be found in /opt/SUNWspro/man. It is hoped that in the near future the compilers will be upgraded to Forte 6.0, the newest Sun compiler suite.
More information on Sun compilers can be found here
MPICH 1.2, an MPI implementation from Argonne National Laboratory, has been installed on blue.unix in /rs6000/mpi-1.2. Complete documentation on MPICH can be found in /rs6000/mpi-1.2/doc. MPICH has been installed on blue.unix to allow users to develop and test MPI codes. By default MPICH only uses node16.unix to execute code, using "loopback" to simulate multiple processors. Users must log on to node16.unix to use MPICH unless they create their own machine file. To use other nodes on blue.unix or different IBM RS/6000 machines users need to create a machine-file containing the names of the machines they wish to use and pass it to "mpirun" as described in /rs6000/mpi-1.2/doc/guide.ps. The default machine file can be found at /rs6000/mpi-1.2/share/machines.rs6000. MPICH on blue.unix will be discussed at the Brownbag on November 15th.
The MPICH home page is
http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/mpich/
Select presentations from the 2000 Supercomputing Conference (SC2000) technical program, including the keynote address and other plenary talks, will be broadcast live over the Internet starting Tuesday, November 7, from Dallas, Texas.
The SC2000 talks will be broadcast in several formats to accommodate users who may not have a access to a high-performance network to their desktop. These formats will include an audio-only broadcast for lower bandwidth connections, an audio with video broadcast for medium-bandwidth connections, and a high-bandwidth audio with video multicast. Instructions for accessing these broadcasts are on the Web page,
http://www.supercomp.org/sc2000/webcasts
The Research Computing Support Center will air the SC2000 webcasts in a large screen format and would like to invite members of the UVa research computing community to come by Wilson Hall 244 to view them. The list of webcast talks to be shown is given below with broadcast times (Eastern Standard Time). The talks will also be recorded and played at 12 noon if you wish to drop by and have lunch in the Research Computing Support Center.
Tuesday - Nov. 7 at 9.30am
Keynote Address:
Petaflops in the Year 2009
Steven J. Wallach
CenterPoint Venture Partners / Chiaro Networks
Wednesday - Nov. 8 at 9.30am
COTS Cluster Systems for High-Performance Computing
Thomas Sterling
NASA JPL, Caltech CACR
Wednesday - Nov. 8 at 10.15am
A Small Dose of INFOSEC
Eugene H. Spafford
Purdue University
Thursday - Nov. 9 at 9.30am
Numbers, Lots of Numbers, and Insight Too: Scientific
Computing 2000
Margaret H. Wright
Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies
Thursday - Nov. 9 at 10.15am
Parallel/Distributed Programming: Research
Success--Application Failure?
J.C. Browne
University of Texas at Austin
The talks will also be recorded and played at 12 noon if you wish to drop by and have lunch in the Research Computing Support Center.
The latest SPSS license codes are now available. Because ITC now has a perpetual license for SPSS, this year's code will not expire. You will, however, have to obtain new codes for each new version that you obtain. All registered users of SPSS should have received a notice informing them about how to obtain the latest license code. If you didn't receive this notice, follow these steps to renew your current license:
1. Using a web browser, go to the following URL:
www.itc.virginia.edu/research/licensing.html
2. Log in using your University ID (usually SSN) and last name
3. Locate the license that you want to renew in the list of
options next to that license, select "Renew"
4. Review the information about the license, update any
information that has changed or is incorrect, and then
select "Continue"
5. If available, select the option to "Download Renewal
Utility". This is the easiest way to renew your license.
If this option is not available for your version of
software, select the option to "Display Renewal Codes
and Instructions." If neither option is available for
your software, please send email to
res-consult@virginia.edu
If you have any problems using the on-line licensing system or renewing your license, please send email to res-consult@virginia.edu or call the Research Computing Support Center at 243-8800.
The Research Computing Support Center is now distributing SPSS for Windows, Version 10.1. All ITC facilities will be upgraded to Version 10.1 effective January 2001 (Version 10.0 is deployed currently).
Also, after a long hiatus, SPSS, Inc. has now released a new version of SPSS for the Macintosh -- SPSS for Macintosh, Version 10.0.
Visit the Research Computing Support Center to obtain these new versions of SPSS.
The SAS Institute will no longer be developing software for the Macintosh operating system in Version 8 and beyond. Technical support for SAS for Macintosh, Version 6.12, will be available for as long as SAS continues to support Version 6, however, bug fixes, patches, and updates will not be available.
The SASware Ballot Survey is an opportunity for SAS software users to give SAS input for future enhancements and features to the SAS System. Every year, SAS software users vote in the SASware Ballot Survey to provide specific feedback on individual SAS software products or services. The votes help SAS plan the direction of future software development and assist them in setting goals and priorities.
To cast your vote, please visit:
http://www.sas.com/service/techsup/feedback/sasware_ballot01/intro.html
They also accept suggestions year round via email at: suggest@sas.com
ITC is currently in the process of evaluating its annual site license with the SAS Institute. As part of this process, we are soliciting input about modules that users would like to see licensed at UVa. Currently, ITC licenses the following SAS modules:
BASE, STAT, GRAPH, ETS, FSP, OR, AF, IML, QC, SHARE, LAB, ASSIST, CONNECT,
INSIGHT, EIS, GIS, SPECTRAVIEW, DB2, ORACLE, SYBASE-SQL Server, PC File
Formats, ODBC, OLE DB
For a brief explanation of these modules, go to:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/sashelp.html#modules
In addition to these licensed modules, some users have expressed interest in other SAS add-on products. For academic customers, these additional products are bundled in a package which includes the following products:
SAS/IntrNet, AppDev Studio, SAS/Warehouse Administrator, Enterprise Miner, Scalable Performance Data Server, SAS/MDDB, SAS/Secure, IT Service Vision, Enterprise Reporter, Enterprise Guide, SAS/Access to R3, Integration Technologies
The cost of this bundle package is an additional $11,000 per year above our current licensing costs, and the products in this package can only be used by teaching and research users (administrative users or folks on a mainframe would have to license these products separately).
Let us know if you might be interested in any of these products so that we can get a better idea of user demand. Currently, we have not had enough users request these products to justify the additional costs. Also, if you have a strong anticipated need for these products, let us know if your department or organization might be able to share the licensing costs. All comments can be directed to res-consult@virginia.edu.
Now that S-Plus 5.1 has been deployed on Unix machines for several months, we are planning the retirement of S-Plus 3.4. S-Plus 5.1 is invoked on Unix machines by typing "Splus" whereas S-Plus 3.4 is invoked by typing "Splusold". Any concerns about the retirement of 3.4 should be directed to res-consult@virginia.edu.
Users of SAS 8.1 should download the following hotfix (particularly affects
users of SAS Connect):
http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/v81fp.html
Users of a Personal Installation of S-Plus 2000 should download the latest
patch upgrading S-Plus to Release 3. Users of the Network Version should
not use this patch but, instead, install S-Plus 2000 (Network Version),
Release 3, which is currently available at the Research Computing Support
Center (you can probably wait until a more major upgrade is available rather
than bothering with a new install for a relatively minor subrelease). If you
are unsure which version of S-Plus you are running, check under Help --
About S-Plus. Versions with the words "License Managed" somewhere in the
About dialog box are Network versions. The patch for Personal Installations
is available at:
http://www.splus.mathsoft.com/resources/download/patches.html
SPSS users can download the latest software patch from the following URL:
http://www.spss.com/tech/downloads/base.ht
Minitab users can download a patch to upgrade their Minitab installations to the Version 13.2 level at the following URL: http://www.minitab.com/support/Maintenance/mtb13_2rm.htm
ITC is exploring the possibility of obtaining a university wide site license for the LabView virtual instrumentation interface software. Due to the high cost of the proposed site license, ITC would need financial contributions from interested parties/departments to make a site license for LabView possible.
We are conducting a survey to gather information about how LabView is
currently used at UVa and to gauge interest among interested users to
sharing the cost for a university wide site license. The survey can be
filled out and submitted from the following Web page:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/labview_survey.html
The Web page also contains additional information about Labview and the proposed site license.