[Users] Einstein Toolkit Release

[Frank Loeffler]

We are pleased to announce the second release (code name "Curie") of the
Einstein Toolkit, an open, community developed software infrastructure
for relativistic astrophysics. This release changed the equation of
state interface from two competing (EOS_Base and EOSG_Base, also known
as the old and the general EOS interface), to a completely new interface
called EOS_Omni, also adding support for tabulated, microphysical EOSs
in the process. In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous
release in November 2010 have been included, and the testsuites have
been checked also using OpenMP.

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 hydrodynamics code GRHydro (an updated and extended
version of the public release of the Whisky code). 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 hydrodynamics. Current
development in the consortium is targeted at providing additional
infrastructure for general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics.

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 five 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>.

Detailed information about this release can be found here:
<http://einsteintoolkit.org/about/releases/ET_2011_05_announcement.php>.

The Einstein Toolkit is primarily supported by NSF
0903973/0903782/0904015 (CIGR), and also by NSF 0701566/0855892 (XiRel),
0721915 (Alpaca), 0905046/0941653 (PetaCactus) and 0710874 (LONI Grid).

The "Curie" Release Team on behalf of the Einstein Toolkit Consortium
(2011-04-21) 

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