[Commits] [svn:einsteintoolkit] www/about/releases/ (Rev. 1053)

Tue Nov 12 13:58:32 CST 2013

User: knarf
Date: 2013/11/12 01:58 PM

Added:
 /about/releases/
  ET_2013_11_announcement.txt

Log:
 work in process on release announcements

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Directory: /about/releases/
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+We are pleased to announce the eigth release (code name "Noether") of the
+Einstein Toolkit, an open, community developed software infrastructure for
+relativistic astrophysics. 
+
+TODO
+This release includes various improvements to the
+MHD handling within GRHydro, and improvements to the Cactus flesh, especially
+treatment of external libraries.
+
+In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous release in May 2013 have been included.
+
+For more detailed information about the "Noether" release please read
+the long release announcement on the Einstein Toolkit web pages:
+http://einsteintoolkit.org/about/releases/ET_2013_11_announcement.php.
+
+The Einstein Toolkit is a collection of software components and tools for
+simulating and analyzing general relativistic astrophysical systems that builds
+on numerous software efforts in the numerical relativity community including
+CactusEinstein, the Carpet AMR infrastructure and the relativistic
+magneto-hydrodynamics code GRHydro. The Cactus Framework is used as the underlying
+computational infrastructure providing large-scale parallelization, general
+computational components, and a model for collaborative, portable code
+development. The toolkit includes modules to build complete codes for
+simulating black hole spacetimes as well as systems governed by relativistic
+magneto-hydrodynamics.
+
+The Einstein Toolkit uses a distributed software model and its different
+modules are developed, distributed, and supported either by the core team of
+Einstein Toolkit Maintainers, or by individual groups. Where modules are
+provided by external groups, the Einstein Toolkit Maintainers provide quality
+control for modules for inclusion in the toolkit and help coordinate support.
+The Einstein Toolkit Maintainers currently involve postdocs and faculty from
+six different institutions, and host weekly meetings that are open for anyone
+to join in.
+
+Guiding principles for the design and implementation of the toolkit include:
+open, community-driven software development; well thought out and stable
+interfaces; separation of physics software from computational science
+infrastructure; provision of complete working production code; training and
+education for a new generation of researchers.
+
+For more information about using or contributing to the Einstein Toolkit, or to
+join the Einstein Toolkit Consortium, please visit our web pages at
+http://einsteintoolkit.org.
+
+The Einstein Toolkit is primarily supported by NSF
+1212401/1212426/1212433/1212460 (Einstein Toolkit), and also by 0905046/0941653
+(PetaCactus) and 0710874 (LONI Grid).
+
+The Einstein Toolkit contains about 200 regression test cases.  On a large
+portion of the tested machines, almost all of these testsuites pass, using both
+MPI and OpenMP parallelization.
+
+The changes between this and the previous release include:
+
+=== Compatibility ===
+
+The following changes lead to potential different numerical results or the need to modify optionlists:
+
+=== Larger changes since last release ===
+
+* New components:
+ - new thorn Timers, needed by Carpet
+* simfactory
+ - updates to many machines
+ - add support for Loewe (Frankfurt), raspberry pis, and tianhe1a
+ - support multi-core setup using setup-silent
+* Cactus flesh:
+ - support linux-gnueabi architecture (e.g. Raspberry Pi)
+ - Add more checks when checking for C99 features
+ - add pegs for parfiles
+ - check that providing function name is different from aliased function name
+* IOUtil:
+ - add option "alias" to read datasets into different variables
+ - abort run when user tries to change a non-steerable parameter during recovery
+* MoL: add parameter to disable MoL_PostStep in Post_Recover_Variables
+* Carpet:
+ - new options of carpet-native electric_fence mechanism to detect memory problems
+ - new parameter max_timelevels to indicate the maximum number of timelevels
+ - Dependency on CycleClock is now optional
+ - add new group tag no_split_directions
+ - New class bboxset2, by default disabled
+* SystemStatistics: add information about swap usage
+* GRHydro:
+ - rewrite of some essential routines in C/C++, to allow for vectorization and to be able to use templates
+ - fix some openmp loops
+ - introduce and use sqrt(detg) grid function
+ - add GRHydro_max_temp parameter to set temperature ceiling
+* TOVSolver:
+ - remove dependency on GRHydro, in particular remove atmosphere handling
+ - remove option to use different K and Gamma for different stars
+* Kranc: Too many improvements/rewrites to list here
+* Multipole: various improvements, especially convergence testing
+* LocalInterp: add 0th order interpolation
+* TwoPunctures: implement UIUC's speed-up in "evaluation" of spectral solution
+
+=== How to upgrade from Gauss (ET_2013_05) ===
+
+To upgrade from the previous release, use GetComponents with the new thornlist to check out the new version.
+
+See the [http://einsteintoolkit.org/download/ Download] page on the Einstein Toolkit website for download instructions.
+
+=== Remaining issues with this release ===
+
+* Certain machines need to be configured specially in Simfactory because the remote directories cannot be determined automatically just from the username.  See the Machine notes below.
+* Recovering with Carpet: The maximum number of timelevels that can be recovered is Carpet::prolongation_order_time+1. This is usually the case, but it is possible to write parameter files e.g. with prolongation_order_time=1 that use 3 timelevels. This bug manifests in an assert() failure when recovering from checkpoints. The work-around is to either increase Carpet::prolongation_order_time or decrease the number of timelevels for the grid function in question accordingly.
+* Some versions of the Intel compiler (so far, all past 20121010 that we have seen) produce wrong code for some valid constructs present in the toolkit. Disabling the 'restrict' keyword works around this issue, and is now used for these compilers until they are fixed, this potentially reduces performance. This bug has been reported to Intel.
+
+=== Machine notes ===
+
+* Kraken:
+defs.local.ini needs to have sourcebasedir = $HOME configured for this machine.  You need to determine $HOME by logging in to the machine.
+* LoneStar and Stampede:
+defs.local.ini needs to have sourcebasedir = $WORK and basedir = $SCRATCH/simulations configured for this machine.  You need to determine $WORK and $SCRATCH by logging in to the machine.
+
+All repositories participating in this release carry a branch ET_2013_11
+marking this release.  These release branches will be updated if severe
+errors are found.
+
+The "Noether" Release Team on behalf of the Einstein Toolkit Consortium (2013-11-16)
+
+Eloisa Bentivegna
+Tanja Bode
+Peter Diener
+Roland Haas
+Ian Hinder
+Frank LÃ¶ffler
+Bruno Mundim
+Christian D. Ott
+Erik Schnetter
+
+November 16, 2013
+

