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xSDK foundations: Toward an extreme-scale scientific software development kit

Supercomputing Frontiers and Innovations

Bartlett, Roscoe B.; Demeshko, Irina; Gamblin, Todd; Hammond, Glenn E.; Heroux, Michael A.; Johnson, Jeffrey; Klinvex, Alicia M.; Li, Xiaoye; McInnes, Lois C.; Moulton, J.D.; Osei-Kuffuor, Daniel; Sarich, Jason; Smith, Barry; Willenbring, James M.; Yang, Ulrike M.

Extreme-scale computational science increasingly demands multiscale and multiphysics formulations. Combining software developed by independent groups is imperative: no single team has resources for all predictive science and decision support capabilities. Scientific libraries provide high-quality, reusable software components for constructing applications with improved robustness and portability. However, without coordination, many libraries cannot be easily composed. Namespace collisions, inconsistent arguments, lack of third-party software versioning, and additional difficulties make composition costly. The Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK) defines community policies to improve code quality and compatibility across independently developed packages (hypre, PETSc, SuperLU, Trilinos, and Alquimia) and provides a foundation for addressing broader issues in software interoperability, performance portability, and sustainability. The xSDK provides turnkey installation of member software and seamless combination of aggregate capabilities, and it marks first steps toward extreme-scale scientific software ecosystems from which future applications can be composed rapidly with assured quality and scalability.

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Replicated computational results (RCR) report for "BLIS: A framework for rapidly instantiating BLAS functionality"

ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software

Willenbring, James M.

"BLIS: A Framework for Rapidly Instantiating BLAS Functionality" includes single-platform BLIS performance results for both level-2 and level-3 operations that is competitive with OpenBLAS, ATLAS, and Intel MKL. A detailed description of the configuration used to generate the performance results was provided to the reviewer by the authors. All the software components used in the comparison were reinstalled and new performance results were generated and compared to the original results. After completing this process, the published results are deemed replicable by the reviewer.

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Supporting 64-bit global indices in Epetra and other Trilinos packages :

Willenbring, James M.

The Trilinos Project is an effort to facilitate the design, development, integration and ongoing support of mathematical software libraries within an object-oriented framework. It is intended for large-scale, complex multiphysics engineering and scientific applications [2, 4, 3]. Epetra is one of its basic packages. It provides serial and parallel linear algebra capabilities. Before Trilinos version 11.0, released in 2012, Epetra used the C++ int data-type for storing global and local indices for degrees of freedom (DOFs). Since int is typically 32-bit, this limited the largest problem size to be smaller than approximately two billion DOFs. This was true even if a distributed memory machine could handle larger problems. We have added optional support for C++ long long data-type, which is at least 64-bit wide, for global indices. To save memory, maintain the speed of memory-bound operations, and reduce further changes to the code, the local indices are still 32-bit. We document the changes required to achieve this feature and how the new functionality can be used. We also report on the lessons learned in modifying a mature and popular package from various perspectives design goals, backward compatibility, engineering decisions, C++ language features, effects on existing users and other packages, and build integration.

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Trilinos developers SQE guide :

Willenbring, James M.; Heroux, Michael A.

The Trilinos Project is an effort to develop algorithms and enabling technologies within an object-oriented software framework for the solution of large-scale, complex multi-physics engineering and scientific problems. A new software capability is introduced into Trilinos as a package. A Trilinos package is an integral unit and, although there are exceptions such as utility packages, each package is typically developed by a small team of experts in a particular algorithms area such as algebraic preconditioners, nonlinear solvers, etc. The Trilinos Developers SQE Guide is a resource for Trilinos package developers who are working under Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) and are therefore subject to the ASC Software Quality Engineering Practices as described in the Sandia National Laboratories Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Software Quality Plan: ASC Software Quality Engineering Practices Version 3.0 document [1]. The Trilinos Developer Policies webpage [2] contains a lot of detailed information that is essential for all Trilinos developers. The Trilinos Software Lifecycle Model [3] defines the default lifecycle model for Trilinos packages and provides a context for many of the practices listed in this document.

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TriBITS lifecycle model. Version 1.0, a lean/agile software lifecycle model for research-based computational science and engineering and applied mathematical software

Willenbring, James M.; Heroux, Michael A.

Software lifecycles are becoming an increasingly important issue for computational science and engineering (CSE) software. The process by which a piece of CSE software begins life as a set of research requirements and then matures into a trusted high-quality capability is both commonplace and extremely challenging. Although an implicit lifecycle is obviously being used in any effort, the challenges of this process - respecting the competing needs of research vs. production - cannot be overstated. Here we describe a proposal for a well-defined software lifecycle process based on modern Lean/Agile software engineering principles. What we propose is appropriate for many CSE software projects that are initially heavily focused on research but also are expected to eventually produce usable high-quality capabilities. The model is related to TriBITS, a build, integration and testing system, which serves as a strong foundation for this lifecycle model, and aspects of this lifecycle model are ingrained in the TriBITS system. Here, we advocate three to four phases or maturity levels that address the appropriate handling of many issues associated with the transition from research to production software. The goals of this lifecycle model are to better communicate maturity levels with customers and to help to identify and promote Software Engineering (SE) practices that will help to improve productivity and produce better software. An important collection of software in this domain is Trilinos, which is used as the motivation and the initial target for this lifecycle model. However, many other related and similar CSE (and non-CSE) software projects can also make good use of this lifecycle model, especially those that use the TriBITS system. Indeed this lifecycle process, if followed, will enable large-scale sustainable integration of many complex CSE software efforts across several institutions.

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Results 26–50 of 53
Results 26–50 of 53

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