PTP/planning/1.1

This document describes the 1.1 release of PTP. This release will add some new functionality as well as enhancements and bug fixes to existing features.

Release Deliverables

The release deliverables are:

• Source code release for PTP Project
• PTP core (downloadable)
• PTP runtime components (downloadable as source)

Release Milestones

Current versions of PTP are built with Eclipse platform 3.2.1 and CDT 3.1.

The milestones are:

• Nov 3, 2006 - Release Candidate 1 (1.1 RC1) - API freeze
• Nov 10, 2006 - Release Candidate 2 (1.1 RC2) - Code freeze

It is expected that RC2 will become the final release, but additional release candidates can be scheduled if necessary.

Target Operating Environments

Platform support for PTP is complicated by the need to operate closely with a variety of parallel runtime systems and debuggers that may in turn support a wide range of architectures. Because of this complexity, only the Java components of PTP will be distributed pre-built. Runtime and debugging support will have to be compiled from source. There are no windowing system specific plugins for PTP.

The current plan is to support Java 1.5 run-time environments only.

PTP Core Supported Platforms

• Linux - x86, x86_64, ppc
• Mac OS X - ppc, x86
• Windows - x86 (PLDT and FDT only: that is, Parallel Language Development tools and Fortran Development Tools both work on Windows, but not the parallel runtime or the parallel debugger, etc.)

PTP Supported Runtime Systems

• Open MPI 1.0.2, 1.2
• MPICH2 (debug not available)

PTP Supported Debuggers

• gdb 6.3, 6.4, 6.5

Component Features

Core/Runtime

1. All 1.0 features
2. Bug fixes
3. Fully asynchronous operation
4. Open MPI improvements
   • Better handling of daemon shutdown and other events
   • Support for Open MPI v1.2
5. Support for MPICH2 (runtime only, no debugging)

Parallel Debugger

Debug Core

1. All 1.0 features
2. Bug fixes
3. Thread support
4. Full AIF datatype support

Debug UI

1. All 1.0 features
2. Bug fixes
3. Thread support
4. Variable display using AIF types

Scalable Debug Manager

1. All 1.0 features
2. Bug fixes
3. Redesigned backend for scalability. This employs a broadcast topology for sending commands to the debug servers, and uses aggregation to manage large volumes of events.
4. Improvements to polling routines to reduced load on backend machine

Fortran Development Tools

1. All 1.0 features
2. Integration with Photran
3. Bug fixes

Parallel Language Development Tools

This will combine the contribution of OpenMP support from IBM with the MPI Development Tools into a new common feature. The aim of this feature will be to provide a range of tools to aid the development of parallel language applications.

1. All 1.0 features
2. Bug fixes
3. Support for OpenMP in addition to MPI (C programs only)
   • OpenMP support, besides the identification of OpenMP artifacts, has additional prototype analysis features including identification of several common concurrency errors, concurrency analysis, and #pragma region identification.
4. Fortran support (this is tentative and may not make it into PTP 1.1)
   • MPI artifact location using Photran infrastructure
   • Possible OpenMP support
5. MPI New project wizard
   • For 1.1 this is an added wizard page to the CDT new managed build C project wizard, allowing specification of MPI include and lib paths, and build commands, with reasonable default settings based on PLDT preferences. This will probably only work for gcc as the compiler.
   • (Note: the MPI New project wizard may be deferred until CDT new project model changes are in, probably summer '07, meaning CDT Release 4.0 and PTP Release 2.0 - this would include a new "MPI Project" type, and user specification of MPI and compiler versions: specify which MPI implementation, and which compiler/toolchain, for the project.)

Other Tools

TAU [1] Support

1. Automatic generation of TAU-instrumented binaries from existing TAU configurations
2. Trace and profile output storage in timestamped directories
3. Make target support (Craig will do if UOregon doesn't)