[Commits] [svn:einsteintoolkit] www/about/releases/ (Rev. 1678)

Tue Dec 6 14:01:30 CST 2016

User: knarf
Date: 2016/12/06 02:01 PM

Added:
 /about/releases/
  ET_2016_11_announcement.txt

Log:
 preliminary release announcement

File Changes:

Directory: /about/releases/
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+ ____  ____  ____  __    __  _  _  __  __ _   __   ____  _  _ 
+(  _ \(  _ \(  __)(  )  (  )( \/ )(  )(  ( \ / _\ (  _ \( \/ )
+ ) __/ )   / ) _) / (_/\ )( / \/ \ )( /    //    \ )   / )  / 
+(__)  (__\_)(____)\____/(__)\_)(_/(__)\_)__)\_/\_/(__\_)(__/  
+
+
+
+We are pleased to announce the fourteenth release (code name "Gaposchkin") of the
+Einstein Toolkit, an open, community developed software infrastructure for
+relativistic astrophysics. This release includes, among other things,
+more examples in the Einstein Toolkit Gallery.
+
+In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous release in May 2016
+have been included.
+
+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. For parts of the toolkit, 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
+1550551/1550461/1550436/1550514 (Einstein Toolkit Community Integration and
+Data Exploration).
+
+The Einstein Toolkit contains about 200 regression test cases.  On a large
+portion of the tested machines, almost all of these test suites pass, using both
+MPI and OpenMP parallelization.
+
+The changes between this and the previous release include:
+
+=== Upcoming changes for the next releases
+
+The Tmunu paramer support_old_CalcTmunu_mechanism, will be removed after this
+release. If you rely on this, your code is probably unnecessarily slow. Let us
+know if the removal would create a problem for you.
+
+Most of the Fortran code in GRHydro was already replaced by more modern, and
+much easier to maintain C++ code. Up to now, both versions are compiled, and
+can be chosen at start-time. For a few releases the C++ versions are the
+default. After this release, the Fortran versions will be removed. Let us know
+if the removal would create a problem for you.
+
+=== Larger changes since last release ===
+
+* Cactus Flesh
+  - Update linker flags to allow linking using newer versions of 'ar'
+  - Add '.' to perl @INC directory to allow build using newer versions of Perl
+  - Provide Cactus version as CACTUS capability to thorns
+  - Allow aligining interior (instead of just origin) of grid functions
+  - Output build timing information in VERBOSE mode
+* Formaline
+  - Attempt to use fast methods where possible (hardlinks are available)
+  - Only update files in thorns that changed
+  -> should make it noticibly faster on most systems
+* Simfactory
+  - use of environment variables CACTUS_NUM_PROCS and CACTUS_NUM_THREADS
+    in runscript of all machines. Update your private entries accordingly.
+  - Updates to several machines (too many to list)
+* Multipole
+  - Add possibility to have separate output directory
+* McLachlan
+  - use parameter other_timelevels for constraints: should use less memory
+    in most cases
+* ExternalLibraries
+  - Version updates if built from scratch: OpenMPI, OpenBLAS
+
+* New thorns or tools
+  - Llama: - multi-patch infrastructure for the Einstein Toolkit
+           - has been publicly available for some time already, but is
+             now part of the Einstein Toolkit
+  - CT_Dust: first public version of cosmological dust code
+
+
+=== How to upgrade from Brahe (ET_2016_05) ===
+
+To upgrade from the previous release, use GetComponents with the new thornlist
+to check out the new version. Switching to the new branch is not possible for
+most repositories due to repository moves.
+
+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 user
+  name. See the Machine notes below.
+
+* Recovering with Carpet: Carpet stores metadata (such as the simulation time)
+  only for Carpet::max_timelevels time levels, although it is possible to
+  allocate more time levels. These additional time levels then cannot be
+  recovered; the symptom is an assertion failure during recovery. The solution
+  is to either increase Carpet::max_timelevels, or to decrease the number of
+  active time levels.
+
+=== Machine notes ===
+
+Supported (tested) machines include:
+
+- Default Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, and MacOS installations
+- Bethe
+- Bluewaters
+- Comet
+- Draco
+- Edison
+- Gulob
+- Gordon
+- Hydra
+- Minerva
+- Queenbee 2
+- Shelob
+- SuperMic
+- Supermike II
+- Stampede (CPU)
+- Wheeler
+- Zwicky
+
+
+*  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.
+   A new configuration for KNL nodes is being worked on, but not yet included
+   in the release (but compilation works and tests mostly pass).
+
+All repositories participating in this release carry a branch ET_2016_11
+marking this release.  These release branches will be updated if severe
+errors are found.
+
+The "Gaposchkin" Release Team on behalf of the Einstein Toolkit Consortium
+(2016-12-08)
+
+Steven R. Brandt
+Peter Diener
+Roland Haas
+Ian Hinder
+Frank LÃ¶ffler
+Erik Schnetter
+Barry Wardell
+
+December 8th, 2016
+

