Vijay Tatkar's Blog

Sun Studio preso at annual OSDevCon
The annual OpenSolaris Developer Conference (OSDevCon)  was held this year in the heart of the Czech republic- Prague, between June 25 - 27th (2008). The first day of tutorials included a free Tutorial by our own Roman Shaposhnick on "OpenSolaris- an Ultimate Development Platform ?" Roman talked about Sun Studio of course and how Sun Studio and OpenSolaris collaborate to form a stable development platform.  Heres a video of his tutorial/presentation( a complete 1hr+ preso)
Roman had two guest presenters: Adrian De Groot of KDE and Dennis Chernaivanov from Docarema. KDE uses Sun Studio for development and is very happy with the state of the tool (I had blogged about it earlier here). Docarema uses both Linux and Solaris servers as their backend

Dave Stewart, our Intel partner guy, was also there and in this blog comments on his take on Roman's presentation here. Dave provides an interesting summary of events related to Roman's tutorial and the views of the KDE and t-Bricks  developers on the strengths and concerns about using Sun Studio for development.

Seems like it was a successful conference all around!
Posted by tatkar ( Jun 30 2008, 01:30:08 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.0 EA2 now available (now on Linux too)
Sun HPC ClusterTools 8 Early Access 2 is a pre-release version of OpenMPI 1.3 with the latest bug fixes and some new features.
CT8 EA2 is the first release to support Linux.
New features in CT8 include:

• Based on the upcoming Open MPI 1.3 release
• Infiniband support
• SGE plug-in
• Linux support (RHEL 4, RHEL 5, SuSE 9, SuSE 10)
  
• DTrace providers for MPI
• MPI support for Mellanox ConnectX HCAs
• MPI profiling with VampirTrace and PERUSE
  
• Support for C++ applications built with libstlport4

CT8 works with Sun Studio 10, 11 and 12 as well as gcc (on Linux only). CT8 works on Solaris 10 (11/06 and above) for both SPARC and x86 (Intel and AMD). Get the download here and give it a try!
Posted by tatkar ( Jun 19 2008, 01:32:25 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [3]

Sun Studio FAQ: Runtime Libraries/object licenses
Q: What are the concerns/license restrictions around Sun Studio Runtime libraries, modules, etc. I remember that in previous releases, we were allowed to use libraries in 3rd party code; now that its free, are we still allowed to do that?
Answer: Yes, this hasnt changed. The list of objects/modules/libraries that users generally require or request to have such permission for, has been modified (mostly added to), over the years, but the license is essentially the same.For more information and details and a list of which objects are included in this, here this RunTime Libraries Licensing Agreeement.
Hint: we try to make this as convenient as possible for others to use our software. Our SW at this stage is not fully  and freely redistributable, but >99% of it is. In particular, the IPS packages that are part of OpenSolaris 2008.05 release (go to package manager and type in sunstudioexpress in search) is now fully redistributable.
Posted by tatkar ( May 27 2008, 03:41:48 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Sun Studio wins Infoworld award in Application Performance category
Sun Studio came out on top in the application performance category in the recently rated in a new IDE survey by Infoworld (here).
NetBeans is rated lower than Sun Studio (on which the SunStudio IDE is based), which is a surprise. Also surprising is the absence of Eclipse in the list, which the article explains in a very unsatisfactory way, IMO.
I'm just glad that it is being noticed that we -Sun Studio compilers- produce good overall application performance. Someone saying ITS BEST really helps.
FYI, IBM's Rational IDE came up on top overall. I'm sure the survey is not without bias, as the comments it has attracted seem to indicate.
Posted by tatkar ( May 22 2008, 10:28:54 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Sun unleashes Quad-core Barcelona systems
And not a day too soon, either! To quote Sun's press (I dont think I'm capable of writing such long, flowery and yet wonderfully descriptive sentences! :-)
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced the availability of its first Sun Fire and Sun Blade systems powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, bringing new capabilities, increased performance and expanded scalability to customers that purchase or upgrade to these quad-core systems. The Sun Fire X4140, Sun Fire X4240 and Sun Fire X4440 servers, the newest systems to join Sun's extensive x64 (x86, 64-bit) server line, give customers industry-leading energy efficiency, density and scalability powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors and a choice of operating systems, including the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), OpenSolaris operating system, Linux, Windows and VMware.
And as a footnote, Sun Studio 12 (with patches) is fully optimized for it (use -xtarget=barcelona switch in addition to the usual switches, to get better instruction selection, esp. for FP-style code). So far, feedback on this mode of code generation has been very positive. I had described these changes in a much earlier blog (as blog timelines go!) here with over 30% improvement on SPECfp and smaller changes on SPECint programs. The volume deployment on systems using Barcelona has been ...er long awaited. Its great to see AMD back in the game; I'm sure this will begin to take the quad-core performance battle with Intel to the next level.
Posted by tatkar ( May 13 2008, 10:28:26 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

OpenMP 3.0 APIs released
The final specifications for the new version of OpenMP (version 3.0) have now been published and uploaded to the official OpenMP site (here)
The draft was open to review from October through January; the completed version is now official.

What is OpenMP?
The OpenMP Application Program Interface (API) supports multi-platform shared-memory parallel programming in C/C++ and Fortran. OpenMP is a portable, scalable model with a simple and flexible interface for developing parallel applications on platforms from the desktop to the supercomputer. The core elements of OpenMP are the constructs for thread creation, work load distribution (work sharing), data environment management, thread synchronization, user level runtime routines and environment variables. These are expressed as directives in Fortran and as #pragmas in C and C++
This is a multivendor, multiple platform vendor-driven industry standard. Members include Sun, AMD, Intel, Cray, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, NEC, PGI and SGI as vendors (permanent members) and auxilliary members such as ASC/LLNL,  cOMPunity,  EPCC,  NASA, RWTH Aachen University.
You can get more info on OpenMP at this official site (here). You can also read a more detailed description at this Wikipedia site.
The first standard came out in October 1997; an update (v2.0) in 2000 (for Fortran) and 2002(for C, C++)  and a combined languages revision (v2.5) in 2005.
There is also a SPEC standard benchmark, called SPEC OMP, that represents typical industry application/usage of OpenMP. Sun has dominated SPEC submissions on the lower end of the scale (less 8,16 nodes).

Whats New in OpenMP3.0?
There are several new features in OMP 3.0. A short enumeration of these:

• the concept of tasks has been added to the execution model
• the memory model now covers the notion of atomicity of memory accesses.
• the definition of an active parallel region has changed
• changes in internal control variable (ICV)
• new routines added to the OMP runtime library, including:  omp_get_level, omp_get_ancestor_thread_num, omp_get_team_size,  omp_get_active_level

Uses of OpenMP3.0
The OpenMP model (shared memory programming) is often debated vs the MPI (message passing interface) model (a distributed, cluster programming model), which is also a vendor-driven industry standard. Both are aspects of  the parallel programming model, which aim at extracting parallelism from an existing application. OpenMP is an incremental model that works at the high-level language level, whereas MPI is a low-level and difficult to use. This section in the Wikipedia has an interesting set of Pros and Cons contrasted between OMP and MPI. The MPI model grew in popularity in the past decade because clusters became easier to buy and assemble and the increasing power of the x86 single-node servers ensured that such clusters could be built cheaply and still deliver good performance. However, now with the multi-core revolution upon us, there is fresh interest in making each of these "nodes" parallelizable as well and so there is fresh interest in OpenMP.
Of course, time will tell, which paradigm, or any derivative of these will ultimately see large-scale adoption. In the meantime vendors are busy working to ensure that they have good, high performing OpenMP implementations that can be used to exploit the increasing number of cores in a single node.
Sun, of course, has been in this game from Day 1. We've had compilers that have supported every OMP standard, immediately after it came out (and no later than any other vendor).
The same will be true with OMP3.0; we are working on getting an implementation of this out very soon now.


Posted by tatkar ( May 13 2008, 09:58:20 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Try NetBeans 6.1
NetBeans 6.1 has been out for about 2 weeks now, tho I have been remiss to mention it here.
NetBeans 6.1 is a minor-version update, but contains some significant changes, esp for C/C++ users. Among them:

• Improved Code Completion (accuracy, relevance, response time)
• Simplified User Model for Toolchain setup
• Editor upgraded to NB 6.x APIs
• Debugging improvements, especially with 'attach', MT applications and conditional breakpoints
• Persistent symbol cross reference facility
• Implement 'mark occurrences' and 'where used' in XRef client
• Integrated assembler module in IDE
• Open Solaris projects: to enable browsing  and building Open Solaris

In addition to these, some of these other general improvements may also be of interest:

• Upto 40% faster startup time, esp. with multiple projects involved
• Lower memory usage with several fixes for memory leaks
• Higher quality, overall
• Window system improvements
• NetBeans source base has moved from CVS to Mercurial, which is a distributable versioning system
• Ruby 2.0 is now supported and bundled with NB
• Integration with MySQL

Give it a try (Free downloads here).
A Sun Studio IDE release based on NetBeans 6.1 will be part of the next Sun Studio Express.


Posted by tatkar ( May 11 2008, 08:39:26 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Sun/Intel Threading Building Blocks Videos now posted
Intel has now posted/hosted Sun/Intel Threading Building Blocks videos. Here they are:

• Scott Smith of Intel speaks with Sun’s Deepankar Bairagi and Intel’s John McHugh about the announcement:
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA6yLLFlN_U
• John McHugh sits down with Deepankar Bairagi to talk about the advantages of adding TBB to Sun Studio:
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4pNNljPvLs
• Deepankar discusses the benefits of using TBB and shows how to access it from within Sun Studio.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWhHRlp2p2M

Looking good, Deep!

Posted by tatkar ( May 09 2008, 02:24:37 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Intel Threading Building Block library now available on Solaris + Sun Studio
Sun and Intel are collaborating to bring Intel TBB (Threading Building Block) software to the Solaris platform using the Sun Studio compilers. Today's the official launch of this collaborative effort. There is a lot of demand in the field for Intel SW (currently available on Linux and Windows) to be ported to Solaris, and this port nicely fills in one of the interesting gaps. One of my engineers worked collaboratively with Intel to make this happen; the success of this venture will encourage us to collaborate on other things as well. I welcome whole-heartedly this innovative problem solving technique to the Solaris platform; particularly with Sun Studio compilers. Parallelism is a critical area in SW development in our bold new future (together I might venture to add, for Intel and Sun). Sun Studio attempts to provide various high performance solutions; Solaris is a wonderful base to build this on with its built-in Multi-Threading support (from day 1 of Solaris 1.0) and the MT-safe libraries that form the bedrock of a parallel programming base. Intel's TBB complements this solution space nicely by offering a unique approach to simplifying parallelism for a certain kind of C++ problem set.

What is Intel Threading Building Block?
Intel invented Threading Building Block (TBB) as a leading-edge, open-source runtime library with a rich set of templates to significantly lower the effort required to express parallelism in C++ programs. The opensource site is here. Some of the benefits of Intel TBB are:

• It requires fewer lines of code to achieve parallelism than other threading models.
• The applications you write are portable across platforms.
• Since the library is also inherently scalable, no code maintenance is required as more processor cores become available.
• This C++ runtime library abstracts the low-level threading details necessary for optimal multi-core performance.
  
• It uses common C++ templates and coding style to eliminate tedious threading implementation work.
  

Solving the parallelism problem for C++ is a tricky one; unlike Fortran programs that are loop-intensive and thus lend themselves to automatic parallelization under certain general programming characteristics, C++ templates pose a level of difficulty with iterators and pointers that optimizers find hard to analyze. TBB is a solution that up-levels the problem, at least for certain problem sets, to a level of abstraction for software writers where low-level parallelism details are automatically handled.
Intel TBB was available for Linux  and Windows from Intel's product website (here).
A version of TBB that can run on the Solaris platform (x86) is now being . This version of TBB can be built using the latest Sun Studio Express compilers and tools(download a copy from here).
The code changes required to make this work on Solaris using Sun Studio have been putback to the opensource site.

Downloading TBB:
You can download TBB (http://threadingbuildingblocks.org). Remember to choose the stable version of TBB.
Download both the source version and the Sun binaries available at the TBB download site.
Use gunzip to unzip the tbb source archive and then extract from the tar archive, using gtar. A directory named tbb20_010oss_src is created.
Similarly extract the sun binaries and place them adjacent to the src directory of the source distribution.

Building TBB for Solaris:
% cd tbb20_010_oss_src
% gmake
This builds the TBB library and places it in the build directory, for example,
tbb20_010oss_src/build/SunOS_ia32_suncc_cc5.9_kernel5.10_release.
This directory contains the files libtbb.so and libtbbmalloc.so.
The TBB build also generates two files, tbbvars.csh and tbbvars.sh. These two files contain useful settings of environment variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which are needed for building an example.
If you downloaded the sun binaries for TBB, the shared objects for the library will be available in the
directory tbb20_20080408oss_src/sun/ia32/cc3.4.3_kernel5.10/lib and the tbbvars.csh and tbbvars.sh scripts will
be in the directory tbb20_20080408oss_src/sun/ia32/cc3.4.3_kernel5.10/bin.
You will find more information on TBB at the Sun Studio Developer Tools Portal,, in particular check out this introductory article on TBB .
Heres raising a toast to the happy introduction of this collaborative effort! Congratulations, Intel!!
This could be the start of something new and wonderful together!

Posted by tatkar ( May 08 2008, 09:53:41 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

JVM now compiles with Sun Studio on Linux
Yep, you heard it right.
The OpenJDK team has pulled off yet another fantastic feat here: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7/jdk7/hotspot/rev/485d403e94e1.
Serguei Spitsyn integrated recently into this changeset.

So, should we get excited about compiling OpenJDK/HotSpot? Doesnt Sun Studio on Linux already compile a bunch of industrial scale applications?
Indeed we should.  Some reasons why:

• HotSpot is a very non-trivial piece of C++ code, so getting it to compile and optimize isnt easy.
• This work happened with collab between the Sun Studio QA team and the OpenJDK team.
• HotSpot had never compiled with Sun Studio before and its Linux code was full of GCCisms. Doling the change to allow this compilation path improves the code quality of OpenJDK.
• This opens the door to other things on Linux: dbx, NB-IDE, Performance Analyzer, Dtrace GUI and other tools to work with this.

IMO, the next logical step is to get OpenJDK projects within NetBeans (Sun Studio) IDE so OpenJDK developers can use a real IDE for development.

As Kelly Ohair mentions in his blog , it opens up new doors for both the Sun Studio and for OpenJDK teams.



Posted by tatkar ( May 07 2008, 03:56:51 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

OpenSolaris launched and Sun Studio is in the network package repository OpenSolaris is here! Its formal launch at CommunityOne (the day prior to JavaOne in San Francisco) has attracted a lot of attention. It was picked up by The Register (here), Application Developer Trends (here), etc. Comments have ranged from "Cool, this is new and exciting" to "Looks just like Linux" (including the site www.opensolaris.com).
An interesting bit of praise comes from this article in ZDnet, titled What Ubuntu wants to be, when it grows up
OpenSolaris comes with full support, ranging from per incident support to a full 24x7 plan, geared fully towards supporting (as they call it) "from dorm room to the corporate board room".
OpenSolaris used to be called Project Indiana, for those in the community more familiar with that name.
 
The new distribution includes a small core operating system on a LiveCD, a network package repository, application packages, and the Sun-developed Image Packaging System (IPS) to hold it all together. With a small LiveCD, you can quickly (with just 6 clicks) install a desktop with a core set of utilities to assemble a simple desktop including Firefox and Thunderbird. IPS lets users easily download and install only the OpenSolaris components they want, rather than a monolithic bundle. And  IPS also supports current Solaris packages, for backward compatibility. All the old stuff still works the same way. You can add/customize your desktop or server with components you need, as you need them through the network package repository. The classic "packages" are all there in the repository:

• Sun Studio 12, which is used to build OpenSolaris
• NetBeans IDE For Java, C/C++ and Ruby Development
• Project GlassFish, the free, open-source, production-ready, supported application server
• Java
• MySQL, Sun's OpenSource database
• OpenOffice, Sun's Free Office Productivity Suite

Give it a try! I think you'll like it. I know I did and I have it installed now on a Toshiba Tecra laptop and a Sun Ultra 20 Desktop.
Posted by tatkar ( May 07 2008, 10:56:27 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

ClusterTools 8 Early Access available
The ClusterTools 8 (CT8) Early Access 1 (EA1) release is now available at
http://www.sun.com/software/products/clustertools/early_access.xml
The CT8 EA1 software is a set of MPI libraries and tools for launching parallel MPI jobs on Solaris (SPARC and x86/x64). New in CT8 EA1 is MPI profiling support via VampirTrace and MPI PERUSE, Infiniband multi-rail communication, support for C++ applications built with STLport4 (in addition to the standard library libCstd, as well as other fixes and features contributed to Open MPI by the community.
CT8 EA1 is based on the upcoming Open MPI 1.3 release.
See http://www.open-mpi.org.
And yes, it works with Sun Studio 12, of course!
Posted by tatkar ( Mar 27 2008, 08:00:42 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Russian Developer Web Portal launched
Sun's Russian team has launched Russian developer web portal  http://developers.sun.ru.
This is designed specifically to make Sun technologies closer to Russian developers, teachers and students.

The portal is not just a translated replica of developers.sun.com. Instead, it makes an introduction to the technologies in Russian to make them understandable for beginning developers, teachers and students. Articles and other materials at the portal sometimes refer to English materials at developers.sun.com or sun.com websites to give source for deeper knowledges.

The portal contains translated articles and news as well as originally written ones - all of them in Russian. There are 7 sections in the Portal (Solaris, HPC, Java ME, JavaFX, NetBeans, Java EE, For_Students).
Posted by tatkar ( Feb 12 2008, 03:46:08 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Interesting Plugins for NetBeans C/C++ Developers
NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack is getting richer for C/C++ Developers every day. The base NB6.0 (and NB6.1) is also improving constantly, most recently with features such as:

• Improvements in the Classes window, which lets you see all the classes in your project and their members and fields.
• New Include hierarchy, which lets you inspect the hierarchy of source and header files in your project
• New Type hierarchy, which lets you inspect all types and subtypes of a class
• Code completion for #include directives

There is now a set of plugins that are interesting and I thought I'd share them here:

Dtrace Plugin Graphical User Interface (GUI) for running DTrace scripts that can  be installed into the Sun Studio IDE or NetBeans IDE 5.5x, 6.0 http://www.netbeans.org/kb/dtracegui_plugin/NetBeans_DTrace_GUI_Plugin.html

Assembler Plugin as part of Netbeans C/C++ Developer Pack  http://asm.netbeans.org/

• supports x86/SPARC assemblers provided by the compilers as well as disassemblers provided by debuggers
• syntax highlighting (instructions, labels, registers etc.)
• register usage highlighting (read/write with different colors)
• hyperlinks to jump and call targets
• navigator as in any other language
• register usage information (shown in a special Registers window)
• register live ranges indication

C++ Experimental Call Graph at: http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp;jsessionid=8522d48195740742ef32c4e3b02a1?pluginid=5079

MPI: This  allows application developers to access Netbeans platform to develop, test, debug MPI applications for the Sun Grid Compute Utility. [Not listed on the NetBeans Plugin portal]  https://mpiplatform.dev.java.net/

TeamWare, ClearCase, VSS support to NetBeans,  at: http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqVSSProfile
Posted by tatkar ( Feb 05 2008, 12:09:54 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

New Sun Studio "refresh" in SXDE 1/08 release
SXDE 1/08 is out and contains a new Express release of Sun Studio based on sources more recent than version 12 release. There are a number of improvements, features, components in this that were not in either Sun Studio 12 or in previous SXDE-bundled Sun Studio. Here is a list:

Performance improvements:

• Tuning for dual-core and quad-core Core2 systems (with Woodcrest, Clovertown targets) that was included in Sun Studio 12 ML release has been integrated.
  
• I blogged about this earlier in this blog
• Tuning for upcoming Quad-core Barcelona systems. This too was in Sun Studio 12 ML and is now integrated in this as well. Since we havent shipped these systems yet, I cant provide any official performance numbers yet, but similar to Core2, the improvements on this new (micro)architecture are remarkable.

New C/C++ features:

• Considerably improved asm_inlining facility for GNU compatible constructs
  
• -xcrossfile=1 is now an alias for -xipo=1
• -xcrossfile=0 no longer has any effect
• -Y and -W options no longer accept "i" as argument
• [C only] __FUNCTION__ is predefined identifier for name of lexically enclosing function
• [C++ only] -xia [Interval arithmetic] is now supported on Solaris/x86.
  
• [C++ only] The C++ compiler now inlines code when you specify -g
• [SPARC only] -xannotate[=yes|no]. Causes extra annotations in binary for later binary optimization (this phase is not available on x86)
  

x86/x64Assembler:

• SSSE3 assembly syntax support
• GNU assembler compatibility:
• For mnemonics without suffix, the presence of register operands determines the suffix implicitly
• Allow 16bit instructions to access 32-bit register operands
• Allow 32bit addresses under 64bit mode
• Added GNU assembler compatible instruction synonyms and assembler directives
• Read the README here for all details

New Sun Studio IDE  is now based on NetBeans 6.0 IDE (download here). and includes these features:

• Improvements in the Classes window, which lets you see all the classes in your project and their members and fields.
• New Include hierarchy, which lets you inspect the hierarchy of source and header files in your project
• New Type hierarchy, which lets you inspect all types and subtypes of a class
• Code completion for #include directives
• Plugins available for Dtrace GUI, Assembler display and an experimental C/C++ Call Grapher
  

Posted by tatkar ( Feb 01 2008, 01:27:36 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [6]