[Users] New Einstein Toolkit Release (Tesla)

[Steven R. Brandt]

We are pleased to announce the sixteenth release (code name "Tesla") of the
Einstein Toolkit, an open, community developed software infrastructure for
relativistic astrophysics. The highlights of this release are:

* A new thorn, Hydro_RNSID which models a rotating neutron star.

* Tutorials have been updated and the install process for new users
   has been simplified.

In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous release in June 2017
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 tests pass, using both
MPI and OpenMP parallelization.

The changes between this and the previous release include:

=== Larger changes since last release ===

* The support for generic machines is more robust, and the ET should 
compile, run, and pass
   the test suites out of the box on new Linux machines.

* A Jupyter-based Tutorial
   (https://einsteintoolkit.org/documentation/new-user-tutorial) is now
   available.

* The AVX512 instruction set used on the Intel "Knight's Landing"
   platform is now supported.

* PITTNullCode now has test outputs

* EOS_Omni polytrope supports hybrid equations of date with up to 10 pieces

=== New thorns or tools ===

* The Hydro_RNSID thorn which provides initial data for a rotating 
neutron star.

=== Upcoming changes for the next releases ===

* New thorns:

   * GiRaFFE, which models plasma flows in a dynamic spacetime

* Changes to WVUThorns_Diagnostics

     * Seed_Magnetic_Fields-modified: Extended Seed_Magnetic_Fields
       thorn for binary neutron stars. Supercedes Seed_Magnetic_Fields 
thorn.
     * Meudon_Bin_NS-modified: Modifications to Meudon BNS initial data 
thorn to
       disable the overwriting of initial lapse/shift, which acts to 
significantly
       reduce coordinate eccentricity. Supercedes Meudon_Bin_NS thorn.
     * VolumeIntegrals_GRMHD-new: Performs volume integrals on arbitrary
       "Swiss-cheese"-like topologies, and even interoperates with 
Carpet to track
       NS centers of mass.
     * VolumeIntegrals_vacuum-new: Ensures that VI_vacuum can be used 
without
       enabling a GRMHD code.
     * particle_tracerET-new: Solves the ODE D_t xi = vi for typically 
thousands of tracer particles,
        using an RK4 integration atop the current timestepping.
     * smallbPoynET-new: Computes b^i, b^2, and three spatial components 
of Poynting flux.
       It also computes (-1-u0), which is useful for tracking unbound matter

=== How to upgrade from Hack (ET_2017_06) ===

To upgrade from the previous release, use GetComponents with the new 
thornlist
to check out the new version.

See the Download page (http://einsteintoolkit.org/download/) on the
Einstein Toolkit website for download instructions.

=== Machine notes ===

Supported (tested) machines include:

- Default Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Mint, OpenSUSE and MacOS 
(Homebrew and MacPorts) installations
- Bluewaters
- Comet
- Cori
- Draco
- Edison
- Golub
- Hydra
- Marconi
- Minerva
- Queenbee 2
- Stampede 2
- Supermike II
- Wheeler

* TACC machines: 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_2018_02
marking this release.  These release branches will be updated if severe
errors are found.

The "Tesla" Release Team on behalf of the Einstein Toolkit Consortium
(2018-02-15)

Steven R. Brandt
Peter Diener
Roland Haas
Ian Hinder

Feb, 2018