Vijay Tatkar's Blog

How does Sun Studio stack up against GCC on Nehalem
This is one of the FAQs on the compiler front that I constantly get at TechDays, at customer meets, etc. I often point to various benchmarks that Sun Studio has won (and that a World Record means this compiler beats every other compiler in the business and that a system configured this way: with specified HW, OS and Compiler levels is the best in performance that you can currently get today.
I have devoted a few blogs to that effect as well in the past.
Two team members of the Sun Studio organization, John Henning (our SPEC rep, really) and Karsten have now written a paper comparing Sun Studio and GCC on Nehalem systems. Its a must read if you've struggled with this issue in the past. You can find it here and you can post your comments or ask questions at the page as well.
Of course, as has been variously argued in the past ( see this thread , eg ), SPEC doesnt always give the full picture. However, IMO, its a good standby for what you can get out of a compiler. The suite is a broad set of industry-accepted applications that represent significant market segments in themselves. Tuning and extracting good performance isnt just a matter of turning some compiler switches on. You can get good gains by analyzing applications carefully and using compiler tunings to improve their performance effectiveness, which is generally what happens in the case of SPEC applications.
Posted by tatkar ( Jun 30 2009, 10:16:22 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Three new important Sun Developer Tools update releases: Sun Studio, NetBeans and Clustertools
In the past week, Sun has announced availability of new releases and updates to three of the most interesting Developer tools:

• Sun Studio 12 Update 1 is the latest production release of Sun Studio Compilers and Tools. Among the shiny new features are:
• C, C++, Fortran compiler optimizations for the latest UltraSPARC and SPARC64-based architectures and support for latest Intel and AMD chips, including SSE3, SSE4a, SSE4.1 and SSE4.2 instructions
• Compiler, debugger, and profiling support for OpenMP 3.0
• Profiling of distributed MPI-based applications 
• DLight - New tool for unified application and system profiling using Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) technology on Solaris platforms 
• dbxTool - New stand-alone graphical debugger 
• Highly tuned and parallelized scientific libraries, including ScaLAPACK 
• Updated IDE based on NetBeans 6.5.1 software

    Look here for more information: http://developers.sun.com  as well as the Studio website:  http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio

• Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.2 offers an integrated toolkit with a  comprehensive set of capabilities for parallel computing that allows developers to create and tune MPI applications that run on high-performance clusters. You get MPI libraries based on Open MPI 1.3.3 standard and ORTE parallel job launcher. It also includes support for Infiniband, shared memory, 10 GbE and Myrinet MX support along with plug-in for Sun Grid Engine, support for third party parallel debuggers (TotalView and Allinea DDT) and is integrated with Sun Studio Analyzer. You can find more information on this release (including Download, Documentation) for Solaris 10, OpenSolaris (both SPARC and x86), and Linuxes (RHEL5, SLES10 and CentOS 5) here: http://www.sun.com/software/products/clustertools 

• NetBeans 6.7 has shipped.  The primary focus of this release was connectivity: helping developers connect to the latest technologies and to each other. NetBeans 6.7 now offers:
• Integration with Project Kenai 
• Native support for Maven 
• Support for GlassFish (v3) 
• Issue tracker and Hudson integrations 
• Support for JavaScript 1.7 
• Ruby remote debugging 
• Integration of the Java ME SDK 3.0
  

    You can find more information about NetBeans 6.7 here.

Posted by tatkar ( Jun 29 2009, 11:03:44 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

OpenSolaris Apps of Steel Challenge
Heres an interesting programming challenge for budding hackers (just follow this link) .
OpenSolaris is looking to beef up its packages repository and you can help. Submit the best entry and win a laptop!
Have fun and make a difference in the OpenSolaris community, while you're doing it! Takers, you may want to act fast, the contest lasts until May 8th. And I should add: dont forget to use Sun Studio compilers to get that extra performance boost from all the improvements made for all hardware upto the most recent one.
Posted by tatkar ( Apr 17 2009, 09:15:04 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Dozen new World Records with Sun Studio + OpenSolaris at Nehalem Launch

Sun today launched x64 systems based on Intel Nehalem chip (aka Xeon Processor 5500 series) in grand style! Sun is calling these Open Network Systems to emphasize that its about much than just a chip upgrade alone. In particular, the message is around system design and innovation that encompasses " the convergence of open compute, storage, networking and software to deliver best application performance, simplicity and savings".
Application performance (and benchmarking performance) is best measured by what Sun highlighted today. Closer to (my)home, its a hit out of this park. Consider what the combination of Sun Studio 12 update 1 and OpenSolaris has cooked up:

• Best (World Record) SPECfp_rate2006, SPECfp_rate_base2006, SPECint_rate2006, SPECint_rate_base2006 performance
• Best (World Record) SPECompM2001, SPEcompL2001 x64 performance
• Best (World Record) SPECcpu performance on single-blade, workstation, and rackmount servers

All in all 13 World Records! Clearly what I would call game, set and match (Sorry about mixing up the sporting metaphors between baseball and tennis here).
You can find more performance briefs here. See here for a whitepaper on how Solaris optimizes for Nehalem.
This is a great chip to work on, and the Sun Studio team has done a wonderful job of delivering outstanding performance in utilizing its strengths.
Sun Studio 12 update 1 is currently in early access and you can join up to preview and take advantage of these performance benefits. Or you can get the same via Sun Studio Express 3/09, also currently available for downloads.

Required Disclosure: SPEC and the benchmark names SPECint, SPECfp and SPEComp are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from this announcement and www.spec.org, as of 04/12/09.
Sun Fire X4170 (2 chips / 8 cores / 16 threads, OpenSolaris 2008.11, Studio 12 update 1) - 36.8 SPECint2006
Sun Fire X2270 (2 chips / 8 cores / 16 OMP threads, OpenSolaris 2008.11, Studio 12 update 1) - 254,318 SPECompL2001
Sun Ultra 27 (1 chip / 4 cores / 8 threads, OpenSolaris 2008.11, Studio 12 update 1) - 45.4 SPECfp2006. Sun Blade X6270 (2 chips / 8 cores / 16 threads, OpenSolaris 2008.11, Studio 12 update 1) - 50.4 SPECfp2006
Sun Blade X6275 (2 chips / 8 cores / 16 OMP threads, OpenSolaris 2008.11, Studio 12 update 1) - 48,097 SPECompM2001
Sun Blade X6275 (2 nodes with 2 chips / 8 cores / 16 threads each, OpenSolaris 2008.11, Studio 12 update 1) - 478 SPECint_rate2006, 355 SPECfp_rate2006

Posted by tatkar ( Apr 14 2009, 02:03:48 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

See you at Sun Tech Days Hyderabad 2009 in mid-Feb
I will be at Sun TechDays in Hyderabad, India around Feb 18-20th. This is now the third year in a row for me. Its a wonderful place to present and have some hearty discussions. The crowd is typically very hungry for knowledge, the organizers are super-efficient and the planning is just immaculate. I go to several TechDays, typically, but this one has impressed me with the size, quality of organization and the impact we can make in recruiting interest in Sun.
Hope to see a lot more of this again this year. Frankly, it charges me up as well after spending 3 days there! Its refreshing to see what direction the future of Software industry (at least in India) is headed.
This is also a good time for me to catch up with whats changing in my country of birth, especially with the global recession underway.
Posted by tatkar ( Feb 05 2009, 10:26:39 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Sun previews a Cloud Computing announcement
The cat is out of the bag now at SugarCRM's SugarCon 2009 conference in San Francisco with Sun preannouncing that it is taking to the Cloud.
There is a lot of Cloud action underway, especially after announcing the formation of a division dedicated entirely to Cloud Computing. Expect to see Sun play in IAAS, PAAS and SAAS layers; Sun has plenty of offerings up and down this stack and bringing them into the Cloud world could do interesting things in the market.
Expect to see a lot more details at CommunityOne event in March 2009.
Posted by tatkar ( Feb 05 2009, 12:22:42 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

xrandr is your(my) friend!
I have had considerable difficulty connecting laptops (particularly ATI-based) to projectors at various conferences (the most annoying ones are where the projector is connected through an intermediate switch that multiplexes inputs) in order to get twinviews on dual-displays. Cant tell you about how many hours I and some of my colleagues have spent configuring, tuning, hand-coding xorg.conf files(an extremely tedious task). This is all on Solaris/OpenSolaris, though in some cases, Linux and even Windows didnt do any better!
Over the past few months, we now have xrandr in OpenSolaris which detects and sets displays to specifications. The typically 1024x768 is still the best resolution I can get in most places, but thats not the utility's shortcoming; its just the nature of the equipment.
You can typically just type the command:

xrandr

to get a listing of connected devices and their possible resolutions. Then you can set the connection to the projector typically with a command like this:

xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1024x768

to get dual-display.
Yay, finally a solution that seems to work most of the time (there are still the odd times when I've found it doesnt get it right). The next trip to Sun TechDays in Hyderabad, India, would be a good test of this capability. I will be talking about Sun Studio compilers and tools again, this year. We have some new and cool features to talk about, so if you're in the area, drop in!
Posted by tatkar ( Feb 02 2009, 11:43:34 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

A $10 laptop in India?
On the heels of one of the cheapest cars announced (Tata Motors, $2500), comes news of a $10 laptop.
This should prove interesting if it is indeed unsubsidized. There are reports that the govt might subsidise a part of this, but no matter, this will still be a n interesting entry! As you can expect, its generated a considerable buzz .
The PC apparently carries 2GB memory, a Wifi, Ethernet port and consumes a meager 2W of power! It probably runs Linux (cant run Windows at that price tag!). This one is certainly worth watching, considering where previous attempts at cheap laptops have gone!
Posted by tatkar ( Jan 31 2009, 08:43:16 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Techtip: Mapping GCC options into Sun Studio Compiler options
A new paper by Diane Meirowitz, Sr Development Compiler engineer in Sun Studio division, talks about mapping GCC options to Sun Studio options.
I know there are users/Sun customers who were looking for such tips, so I thought I'd pass it on here.
Posted by tatkar ( Jan 26 2009, 02:00:15 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Clarifying some terminologies over Cloud Computing
Its not unusual that a new technology trend like Cloud Computing has a whole slew of confusing terms and acronyms for some fairly simple, straightforward concepts. Bugging, but not unusual :-)
So, if you're confused (like me), here are some pointers that might help.
I have found that this blog does a good job of Demystifying Iaas, PaaS, SaaS and other terms . . These are the three major categories.
Moreover, Peter Laird, has done a remarkable job of creating a Visual Map of Cloud Computing Landscape".
Thank you, Roman, for this recommendation!
Both of these are good overviews. Hope it helps you as it has helped me understand the overall picture.
Posted by tatkar ( Jan 09 2009, 11:41:49 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Where is Sun headed with Cloud Computing?
Life just got interesting in Sun Cloud Computing with this acquisition of Q-layer, a Belgium-based organization. The acquisition brings to Sun an immediate ability to offer efficient, full datacenter virtualization, a key aspect of Cloud Computing. The Q-layer software supports instant provisioning of services such as servers, storage, bandwidth and applications, enabling users to scale their own environments.
To our new brethren: Welcome aboard and I hope you have a fun ride here. We are pleased to have your expertise here and I'm equally sure that you will like the culture and engineering talent at Sun.
On a broader theme ...
If you'd like to read more about the overall vision, I'd recommend looking at these slides from Dave Douglas's presentation to Sun Analysts in November 2008 after the reorg announcement. [Dave Douglas is head of the Cloud Computing Group within Sun].
You may also want to hear this interesting podcast by Lew Tucker, CTO of Cloud Computing (at Sun). Together, they give a good sense of what Sun is attempting to do in 2009 as it re-enters the Cloud Computing area in a bigger way.
For more details on Sun's Cloud Computing initiative, you can you find more details here.
Posted by tatkar ( Jan 07 2009, 08:13:29 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Cloud Computing: the hot trend of 2008 and pick of 2009!
Cloud Computing has turned out to be the hottest trend for 2008. Google searches for the term skyrocketed (with Bangalore, India and San Jose, CA leading the trend!).
Several interesting announcements helped: IBM, Google/Salesforce deal,  Yahoo/Intel/HP alliance, VMware, , Microsoft's Azure,  and Sun all announced major new activities.
Despite some significant glitches which didnt go unnoticed, all indications are that this trend is here to stay. Or, more accurately, grow in 2009, judging from these 8 IT analysts who all had Cloud Computing in their Top 5 predictions for 2009.
Now, thats saying something!
Posted by tatkar ( Jan 06 2009, 08:36:20 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

A new gig in the new year
20 years after developing and managing within the Sun Developer Platforms group, particularly, Compilers and Tools, I am now moving to the Cloud Computing Group. This move is part of a business streamlining plan Sun outlined in mid November (the main idea being to re-align Sun's business with changing global picture and to invest in high-growth areas).
Cloud Computing has the potential for realizing significant revenues for Sun which is now increasing focus its on it.
Personally, this is an exciting new area for me and my team. This will mean moving away from an area where I helped my teams establish World Record application performance over the past few years and navigate C and C++ compilers through interesting transitions, especially through new language standards and a new business model, and I'm sad about leaving that behind me. However, all that experience will be invaluable in the new world of Cloud Computing where Sun has plenty of unique things to offer.
So, with a bit of trepidation and a lot of optimism, its time to look forward to the challenges and excitement of 2009.

Posted by tatkar ( Jan 05 2009, 01:05:11 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Happy New Year, its 2009!
Its time to look forward and its time to reflect on what has, and may have, happened in the past year. There are significant lessons to carry forward.
I expect many changes on the immediate horizon for the industry, for Sun and I know there are upcoming changes for me. (More on this soon, ...).
But, for now, heres hoping to much success in the year ahead!
Posted by tatkar ( Jan 01 2009, 11:48:07 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Browsable index to Sun Studio Tech Articles
There is now a browsable index to all the Sun Studio technical articles on SDN at:
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/documentation/techart/index.jsp

Kudos to the team on getting it there; it will now be easier to find Sun Studio tech articles!

Posted by tatkar ( Dec 18 2008, 09:34:34 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]