Vijay Tatkar's Blog

Thursday July 31, 2008

Using Sun Studio Express 7/08 on OpenSolaris 2008.05
A note to add if you are using OpenSolaris and want to use Sun Studio Express 7/08 with it:
OpenSolaris 2008.05 has a mechanism that lets you point it to the latest repository. The facility is usually:
# pkg set-authority opensolaris.org
 If you use it to update packages to the latest builds, there is a chance that you might run into a mismatch between various packages that might cause dbx to not work. The problem manifests itself while debugging 32bit MT applications with  messages like:
dbx: warning: could not initialize thread debugging library -- debugger service failed
dbx: warning: thread related commands will not be available
Or a message such as:
ld.so.1: ld: fatal: libld.so.4: version `SUNWprivate_4.2' not found
This is usually due to a mismatch between ld and liblddbg.so in packages such as SUNWtoo and SUNWcsr
If you run into this problem, or better still to avoid this problem, the advice is to stay on the OpenSolaris 2008.05 version and not upgrade to the latest builds.
Alternately, at least at this stage, updating the entire system also works (since everything stays in sync), but there is no guarantee that this will continue to always be the case, so its best to avoid doing this upgrade.

Posted by tatkar ( Jul 31 2008, 08:14:10 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

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Wednesday July 30, 2008

Sun Studio Express 7/08 is now available on Solaris and Linux
Sun Studio Express 7/08  is now available for  Solaris 10, OpenSolaris and Linux (RHEL and SuSE). We are looking for you to preview the new features and give us feedback. Listening to this feedback is a prime motivation for exposing these features, so please be sure to sign in and use the Sun Studio Forums to give us your comments, suggestions, (gripes?), etc

The new release is loaded with features. Some of the big bullets are:

• C, C++ compiler, assembler features:
• Support for SSE4.1 and SSE4.2 features
• Instruction selection and performance enhancements for AMD's Barcelona and Intel's Penryn and upcoming Nehalem chips
• Optimization enhancements for SPARC64 VI, VII, UltraSPARC IV+ and Niagara-2 chips (aka UltraSPARC T2), bringing several World Record Benchmarks on these new machines
  
• OpenMP3.0 API support in C, C++, Fortran compilers
• MPI Profiler
• Performance analyzer enhancements
• D-light is a plugin for the Sun Studio 12 IDE that offers a variety of instrumentation that takes advantage of the Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) debugging and performance analysis functionality in the Solaris OS.
• DTrace GUI Plugin is a graphical user interface (GUI) for running DTrace scripts
• NB6.1 based Sun Studio IDE
• RTC on Linux for memory access, leaks and usage
• Sun Performance Library improvements, geared towards new (micro-)architectures

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Tuesday July 22, 2008

Clarifying Sun Studio Patch Policy: Patches continue to be free
Many of our users apparently do not download the latest Sun Studio patches because they do not know about a SunSolve policy change over the past years. Please note that Sun Studio patches continue to be free; the only change is that users need to get a sunsolve online account (which is free) in order to download it.
To drive this point home, our support team has added the following text to all of our patch downloading pages :

Sunsolve is a proprietary online database of software patches, patch information, tools, technical articles and troubleshooting documents. Access to SunSolve requires you to have a Sun Online Account and accept the updated License Agreement. Getting new account at sunsolve is free and does not require a service contract at https://reg.sun.com/register?program=ssu&goto=http://sunsolve.sun.com. If you have an existing SunSolve Sun Online Account, and you have not already accepted the new Software License Agreement, the next time you login and access SunSolve Online, you will be prompted to accept the new Software License Agreement. This is stored on a cookie on your system. If you clear the cookie you will be asked to re-accept this license agreement.

All the pages are now live with this updated wording clarifying the policy:

http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/ss12_patches.jsp
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/ss11_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/ss10_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/ss9_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/ss8_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/s1s8cc_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/s1s7ee_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/s1s7cc_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/fd6u2_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/fd6u1_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/fd6_patches.html
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/sw5_patches.html
Posted by tatkar ( Jul 22 2008, 04:07:41 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

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Monday July 21, 2008

New Sun Studio Article: Accelerate Builds with Dmake
Sun Studio's dmake utility can accelerate complex application builds by building components in parallel. Learn how to configure a distributed build environment and get guidelines on makefile customization. This new article on the Sun Studio Developer Portal explains this in easy steps.
As a point of reference, when we turned this loose on Solaris (in the Solaris 9 timeframe), on a 4-CPU machine, it accelerated build times by roughly 3.6x (reducing ON builds from approximately 12 hours to a little over 3 hours). Those numbers: 12 hours down to 3-ish hours, tell the real story of a direct benefit to developers and integrators, not just to buildmasters or release engineers.
Dmake is also the default for builds in the project system that the Sun Studio IDE uses, so you get this benefit without having to think about it.
Posted by tatkar ( Jul 21 2008, 12:50:09 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

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Wednesday July 16, 2008

Sun SPARC Enterprise Server M9000 and Sun Studio Break 2TFlop barrier
Sun's recently announced SPARC Enterprise Server series of machines has run off with a string of World Record Benchmarks (see SPECfp 2006 records here, SAP-SD 2-tier records here  and outrunning Power6 comparable systems here). They also excel on the SPECompM2001 benchmark with new World Records (here).
One of the most important benchmarks in HPC marketplace is the Linpack benchmark (which solves a dense system of linear equation, allowing the user to scale the size of the problem and to optimize the software in order to achieve the best performance of a given machine). Linpack results are carefully tabulated  (here) and used in buying decisions. Sun has achieved a  2+ TeraFLOPS  performance, handily beating the nearest rivals including IBM's Power6 systems and HP's Itanium-based Integrity Superdomes by a 2x and 3x margin. Sun's results are announced here. Its great to see Sun back in this market with a strong SPARC processor presence.
This benchmark is a highly parallel test designed to measure how fast a computer system can solve linear equations, a common task in engineering and scientific applications. Subsequently, Sun Studio's ability to optimize is absolutely critical to this benchmark and to the HPC market. Its a great vindication of the tireless efforts of many engineers to achieve this end result. And it is a testimony to the excellent relationship between Sun and Fujitsu that Sun could pull this feat off based on the latest Fujitsu SPARC64 VII quad-core processors!
Way to go! May this be a key entry point for Sun's increasing presence in the HPC market.
Posted by tatkar ( Jul 16 2008, 05:21:27 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

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Friday July 11, 2008

A sad, tiring and brutal day
Yesterday, Sun finished a major portion of its RIF (Reduction in Force)in the US. Its always a sad day when we lose a colleague; for a manager (like me), it is doubly so on a day like this. Very tiring. Very stressful. Very brutal. But nothing compared to the sentiments that overwhelm those who are at the other end of this discussion. When you have to communicate this news as a manager, to someone you have worked with for a decade or more, the sadness in the room is indescribable. I have learnt so much in the past decade about management that this feels like a part of me has been cut off.
Of course, I wish I never have to do this again. Ever. Telling yourself that its part of the job is nowhere near convincing. Trying to convince oneself that its necessary for the business we are in (or, not in, which is why we have to do this) sounds hollow. For a manager, this is by far, the hardest job in their career. I still believe in this company passionately. I still believe this company has far more potential on the basis of its technical strength. But just once in a while, on a gloomy day like this, I get the feeling of being the bright, superbly talented person who is unable to reach their true strength.
Its also a day to be extra careful. That the same colleagues who took joy, pride and dignity in the execution of their daily duties are today afforded the same pride and dignity. That, yes, we will move on and accept the job eliminations some other day, but that today its about the memories and the abilities and interactions of those who are leaving that have dominated our lives in the past years.
So, Good luck friends. The memories will stay with us forever. Sun wishes you well and that someday you may even find it interesting to return to Sun and join the Sun Boomerang Club.
Posted by tatkar ( Jul 11 2008, 01:05:11 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

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