•
Several compilers and libraries have been updated on hexagon. For maximum performance and stability we recommend that people recompile their programs. Note that for the Pathscale compiler we are waiting for a fixed license file, we will update this note when it is back online.
Update:Pathscale is now working again.

MPI:
xt-mpt: 3.4.1 -> 3.4.2

Libs/math:
xt-libsci 10.3.8 -> 10.3.9
petsc 3.0.0.5 -> 3.0.0.6
libfast 1.0.5 -> 1.0.6
fftw 3.2.1 -> 3.2.2

Compiler:
xt-gcc 4.3.3 -> 4.4.1
pathscale 3.2 -> 3.2.99
pgi 9.0.2 -> 9.0.3
xt-asyncpe (wrapper) 3.2 -> 3.3

Debugger tools:
NEW: xt-atp 1.0
NEW: mrnet 2.0.1.1
xt-lgdb (gnu debugger) 1.1 -> 1.2


NOTES:

New Module command functionality:
New Feature to "module help". The "module help product/version" command will now provide information about that specific product version (release-notes).

gcc
See http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4 for more information.

Known problem: GCC 4.4.x seg faults when instrumented with CrayPat

xt-atp
ATP 1.0 (Abnormal Termination Processing):
Purpose:
--------
Abnormal Termination Processing (ATP) is a system that
monitors Cray XT System user applications, and should an
application take a system trap, ATP performs analysis on
the dying application.

Limitations:
- When using ATP, an applications crash will not produce a
core dump.
- When using ATP, the application cannot be checkpointed.
- ATP does not support threaded application processes.
- ATP has been tested at 1024 cores. At scales above this there
are performance issues that need to be researched.

Documentation:
--------------
See the intro_atp man page and "module help xt-atp".


mrnet
Initial release of MRNet - The Multicase/Reduction Network.

Documentation:
--------------
http://www.paradyn.org/mrnet/release-2.1/UsersGuide.html


xt-libsci
10.3.9 supports gcc 4.4.x

petsc
Support for the GCC 4.4 compiler.
Bug fixed:
752765 Malfunction of CASK SpMV

Documentation:
--------------
http://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/petsc-as/documentation/index.html


xt-mpt
Bugs Fixed:
752156 PTL_PT_VAL_FAILED when doing large transfer mpi_allgather
748473 MPI_Gather slower

libfast
Provide optimized functions for round() and roundf() in C,
and ANINT() and DNINT() in Fortran. These functions round
a floating point number to the nearest whole number.


fftw
Improve performance of some copy operations of complex arrays on x86
machines. Add configure flag to disable alloca(), which is broken in mingw64.
Planning in FFTW_ESTIMATE mode for r2r transforms became slower between fftw-3.1.3 and 3.2. This regression has now been fixed.

•
Since /work usage on hexagon continue to rise sharply (also after our request for cleanup) we will be forced to implement automatic deletion in /work starting from October 1st 2009.

The automatic deletion will be done at any time when the /work usage is above 65%. The script will delete files based on age, size and last access - prioritizing oldest files for deletion first. Files newer than 7 days will not be deleted.

Since this deletion process (as well as the high disk usage percent) will take away disk-performance from the running jobs - the best solution is of course for you to remember to clean up after each job.

Remember that /work has no backup and is intended for the input and output data of the current running jobs only.

The policy and thresholds for the disk-cleanup may need to be revised if the /work usage continue to be too high. In that case we will contact hexagon users again.

Please send any questions to support-uib@notur.no.

•
Work file system crashed on fimm Friday night, all jobs using work file system also crashed. We blocked login node for maintenance and working on it. We will keep you updated.

Update 2009-09-13 16:19

There are some disk failed on work file system. We are investigating the issue.

Update 13:00 2009-09-14

Work file system is mounted back. All jobs which were using work file system before the file system crash has to be resubmitted. Fimm login node updated to the new kernel and latest version of GPFS.

Sorry for all inconvenience.




•
Due to a needed security update that requires a reboot we will be forced to do the next maintenance of hexagon earlier than planned. We will therefore have a scheduled maintenance starting on Thursday Sep. 10th at 13:00.

Job-scheduler reservation is now in place so that only jobs that can finish (according to requested walltime) before the scheduled maintenance will be allowed to start.

During the maintenance we will install a security update as well as replacing a few faulty hardware components.

We will update this note when we have more information about expected length or ongoing progress for the maintenance.

As usual, send any questions to support-uib@notur.no.

Update 16:30: Machine is now up again and ready for use.

•
Several libraries and have been updated on hexagon.
For maximum performance and stability users are encouraged to log out and in again and then recompile their programs and libraries.

Updates:
xt-asyncpe 3.2
xt-libsci 10.3.8
petsc 3.0.0.5
libfast_mv 1.0.5
mpt 3.4.1
java-jdk 1.6.0_15
PGI compiler 9.0.2
Intel compiler 11.1.046

Removed
xt-libsci 10.3.5
petsc 3.0.0.3
libfast_mv 1.0.3
mpt 3.1.2

•
Several libraries have been updated on hexagon.
For maximum performance and stability users are encouraged to log out and in again and then recompile their programs and libraries.

Updates:

MPI:
xt-mpt 3.3.0 -> 3.4.0

Libs/math:
xt-libsci 10.3.6 -> 10.3.7
hdf5 1.8.2.3 -> 1.8.3.0
netcdf_hdf5parallell 4.0.0.3 -> 4.0.1.0
netcdf 4.0.0.3 -> 4.0.1.0
petsc 3.0.0.3 -> 3.0.0.4
acml 4.2.0 -> 4.3.0

Compiler:
xt-asyncpe (wrapper) 3.0 -> 3.1
pgi 8.0.6 -> 9.0.1

NOTES:

xt-mpt
Bug fixes related to SHMEM as well as Intel compiler.

hdf5/netcdf
New features and bugfixes.

See here for more information:
http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/current/src/hdf5-1.8.3-RELEASE.txt

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/release-notes-4.0.1.html

petsc
Feature update: CASK 1.1, plus bugfixes.

CASK 1.1 includes new sparse matrix vector multiplication for
transposed matrices improves the performance by 5-30% depending
on nonzero pattern of the matrix.

Support for the Intel compiler.

ACML
New feature release. Note that this release does not support the pathscale compiler.

See ACML site for more information:
http://developer.amd.com/cpu/Libraries/acml/features/pages/default.aspx

PGI
New major release.

See PGI site for more information:
http://www.pgroup.com/doc/pgiwsrn901.pdf