OpenMP

Previous notions of limited scalability of Linux were abruptly changed last year by the introduction of the SGI Altix server, which scaled up to 64 processors within a single system image (SSI). Today, large-scale Linux servers with hundreds of processors are being deployed by a variety of businesses, universities, research centers, and governments around the world. NASA Ames Research Center, for example, continues to push the limits even further with their 512-processor system running a single instance of the Linux kernel. This article examines the challenges in enabling large numbers of processors to work efficiently together to better support Linux system configurations for High- Performance Computing (HPC) environments. We will explain what scaling is, the importance of good hardware design, and the kernel changes that make scaling Linux on systems up to 256 pr... (more)

Intel Lets Loose with Linux Development Tools

Continuing its new commitment to dual-core processing, Intel Corporation today announced new tools for software developers to help build threaded applications and extract the best performance from applications on multi-core platforms. The Intel Compilers version 9.0 for C++ and Fortran programming languages also help improve security protection in Linux and Windows applications. "As demand increases for multi-core platforms, there is an opportunity for software vendors to add performance, features and innovations to their products concurrent with this major architecture shift," ... (more)

Sun Updates Studio 12

Sun Tuesday released its Studio 12 Update 1 advanced compilers and tools for Solaris, OpenSolaris and Linux. An optimized environment for the latest multi-core x86 and Sparc-based systems, it’s supposed to simplify parallel development and heighten application performance. Geared to C, C++ and FORTRAN developers, it consists of parallelizing compilers, powerful debuggers, advanced thread and performance analysis tools and highly tuned libraries. Its features should help developers debug multithreaded code, isolate common thread issues and profile thread execution for performance... (more)

MEDIA ALERT: SiCortex “Science to Science” Webcast Series to Feature Parallel Programming Models Presentation by Dr. Barbara Chapman

SiCortex, Inc.: WHAT: SiCortex, Inc., maker of the world’s most energy-efficient high-productivity computing (HPC) systems, will host the next installment of its “Science to Science” Webinar series, a global industry forum highlighting the use of HPC systems in advancing scientific discovery. University of Houston Professor of Computer Science Barbara Chapman will present “Parallel Programming for Multicore Platforms”. The rapid growth in parallel computing is drawing attention to application developers’ need for parallel programming languages and extensions that exploit new hard... (more)

PGI Release 2010 Enables Scientists and Engineers to Harness the Computational Power of GPUs

PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Portland Group®, a wholly-owned subsidiary of STMicroelectronics, today announced that release 2010 of the PGI® line of high-performance parallelizing compilers and development tools for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows will be available on Tuesday, November 17. PGI 2010 is the first general release to include full support for the PGI Accelerator Programming model v1.0 standard on x64 processor-based systems incorporating NVIDIA CUDA(1)-enabled Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). In addition to supporting high-level programming of... (more)