2002 User Survey Results

Software

• Legend
• Satisfaction with Software (sorted by Average Score)
• Satisfaction with Software (sorted by Platform)
• Comments about Software:   26 responses

Legend:

Satisfaction with Software (sorted by Average Score):

Satisfaction with Software (sorted by Platform):

Comments about Software:   26 responses

Debuggers / performance analysis and other tools:

The present default version of Totalview on the IBM SP does not work correctly with our code, making debugging very difficult. We had been using the previous version, which did work but is no longer available. We would be very grateful if it were returned to service.

Losing Cray's totalview and debuggers is a real loss as they were very superior to what's available on the Cray's. I also don't like XProfiler too much. ...

... The debugging tool was a bit tricky to use, and I should probably come to one of the classes/training sessions. This would allow me to really use the debugger as a tool.

Totalview runs waaaaay too slow when I run it on seaborg. I think it is slow because my network connection is not fast enough to run such a windows intensive piece of software. I would love it if there was some kind of text based debugger I could use like dbx.

More software tools to analyze results (particularly in the netcdf format) would be very helpful. Tools for performing quick visual checks of model outputs in netcdf format (simple stuff like ncview) are missing. Having some of these tools available on seaborg will cut down on ftping in out of HPSS.

My dissatisfaction with the IBM SP is mostly related to tools and compilers provided by IBM. The ACTS group is making good progress putting together a useful tool set for applications.

I think the software could be expanded to include more modules, including other text editors, graphics programs, debuggers, etc. Of course, this should not compromise the performance of the main machines. If I have to choose, I still prefer performance.

Need to have real debuggers that are GUI. [PDSF user]

I am not aware of debugging utilities on PDSF other than gdb and I find gdb very unsatisfying. I had looked for some alternative on the PDSF web pages, but I haven't found any documentation indicating a different way to debug FORTRAN and/or C/C++ code.

NERSC response: There are not many alternatives to gdb on linux. STAR is looking into purchasing Totalview (which has a GUI interface and works well with both gcc and pgf). The licenses are expensive ($5700.00 for 8 floating licenses +20%/year maintenance fee - that is a cost of 1TB of disk vault), but we will consult with all the group representatives to find out whether they are interested in financing it.

Unix environment (shells, editors, GNU, modules):

It would help me enormously if you had emacs or some other text editor other than VI on the log in node. I hate VI and have to do editing locally and do more file transfers than I would like. When debugging, it is useful to make quick changes on the local computer.

... A simple editor would be useful for interacting with users who don't know vi or emacs; e.g., pico is pretty good.

... including other text editors, ...

It would be nice if the default environment setup was a little more user friendly (i.e. due to the ubiquity to emacs as an editor I was shocked that I manually had to load the module on startup, etc.)

... I am happy you have made the GNU packages available and I use them every time I log in.

The environment is extremely difficult. No command history, the term caps aren't set to common keyboards (no arrow keys for command line). I think that these problems can be fixed if I fiddle with the settings, but it seems that it would make more sense to just include them especially since most UNIX OS's use them as standard (Linux, Irix, DEC).

hard to know which modules to load -- guessing game

I cannot get a reasonably modern ksh. ... [seaborg user]

cray T3E needs better shell like tcsh

Compilers:

The fortran compiler on seaborg is a bit slow, but overall it is good. ...

Our application seems to perform particularly badly on SP machines, where we typically get around 6% peak floating point performance. We've worked at applying various compiler optimizations  but have not succeeded in improving the performance beyond this limit. This is in contrast to other platforms (ia32, compaq, hitachi) where we typically run at 15-25%.

Current version of IBM FORTRAN compiler has a bug. I reported this, but they don't fix it.

My dissatisfaction with the IBM SP is mostly related to ... and compilers provided by IBM. ...

Compiling and running was really very easy. There are lots of little issues to be uncovered as time has passed, but each has been straightforward. ...

... How about being able to use g++ in parallel? ...

Applications (math, viz, chemistry):

It would be very helpful to have matlab since most of my analysis routines are written in matlab and then I wouldn't have to transfer the data to another machine to analyze it.

matlab on seaborg?

Get matlab (is it already there?)

Some ab initio molecular dynamics code (as VASP) will be helpful

... Need a better DX with more modules.

... other graphics programs ...

Satisfied:

I use mostly IBM and I am very satisfied with software performance on this machine

All software I need is available.

My needs are limited to a C compiler and MPI. Everything I have used has been excellent.

Libraries:

Need lapack and scalapack 64 bit libraries!