HP-UX 11i Technical Computing Operating Environment

64-bit integer interface for VECLIB and LAPACK libraries

Sparse BLAS functionality

Sparse solver library improvements

LAPACK 3.0 compliance

Archive and shared libraries

Shared libraries

Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine (BLAS) Standard functionality

LAPACK 3.0 tuned for HP PA-RISC 2.0 processors

Simplified sparse solver interface with improved performance

Improved performance of key routines

Improved C and C++ usability

New start up. The new HP MPI start-up requires that MPI be installed in the same directory on every execution host. The default is the location from which mpirun is executed. This can be overridden with the MPI_ROOT environment variable. We recommend setting the MPI_ROOT environment variable prior to starting mpirun.

Previous versions of HP MPI allowed mpirun to exit prior to application termination by specifying the -W option. The option -W used with mpirun is no longer supported. To achieve similar functionality, place mpirun in the background.

Support for shared libraries. When a library is shared, programs using it contain only references to library routines, as opposed to archive libraries, which must be linked into every program using them. The same copy of the shared library is referenced by each executable using it. An advantage of shared libraries is that when the library is updated (e.g. to fix a bug), all programs, which use the library immediately, enjoy the fix.

Library names. Some of the libraries have been merged. Compilation wrappers have been provided for convenience. Wrappers can also be used as templates.

Multi-thread mode. By default, the non thread-compliant library (libmpi) is used when running MPI jobs. Linking to the thread-compliant library (libmtmpi) is now required only for applications that have multiple threads making MPI calls simultaneously. In previous releases, linking to the thread-compliant library was required for multi-threaded applications even if only one thread was making a MPI call at a time.

Additional MPI-2 support. HP MPI 1.7 expands MPI-2 support of one-sided communications to clusters. Refer to "Appendix C" in the HP MPI User's Guide, 6th edition, for a full list of MPI-2 support.

New options for handling standard IO. HP MPI 1.7 supports several new options for handling standard IO streams.

All standard input is routed through the mpirun process. Standard input to mpirun is selectively ignored (default behavior), replicated to all of the MPI processes, or directed to a single process. Input intended for one or all of the processes in an MPI application should therefore be directed to the standard input of mpirun.

Since mpirun reads stdin on behalf of the processes, running an MPI application in the background will result in the application being suspended by most shells. For this reason, the default mode for stdin is off. Running applications in the background will not work with stdin turned on.

Backtrace functionality. HP MPI 1.7 handles several common termination signals differently (on PA-RISC systems) than earlier versions of HP MPI by printing a stack trace prior to termination. The backtrace is helpful in determining where the signal was generated and the call stack at the time of the error.

IMPI functionality. The Interoperable MPI protocol (IMPI) extends the power of MPI by allowing applications to run on heterogeneous clusters of machines with various architectures and operating systems, while allowing the program to use a different implementation of MPI on each machine.

Fortran profiling interface. To facilitate improved Fortran performance, we no longer implement Fortran calls as wrappers to C calls. Consequently, profiling routines built for C calls will no longer cause the corresponding Fortran calls to be wrapped automatically. In order to profile Fortran routines, separate wrappers need to be written for the Fortran calls.

Expanded support for collecting profiling information. You can collect profiling information for applications linked with the thread-compliant library in addition to those linked with the standard MPI library. Counter instrumentation (MPI_INSTR) is supported for the thread-compliant library regardless of thread level. Trace file generation (XMPI) is supported for all thread levels except MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE.

A new error checking flag (-ck) in the mpirun utility. The new error checking flag (-ck) allows you to check appfile set-up, host machine and program availability, and file permissions without creating MPI processes.

The mpirun utility no longer makes assumptions about how long it will take before a process calls MPI_Init. Timeout errors before MPI_Init that may have been seen in older versions of the product do not occur in this version because mpirun no longer makes assumptions about time to MPI_Init.

Support for the TotalView debugger.

Support for collecting profiling information for applications linked with the thread-compliant library in addition to those linked with the standard MPI library.

Expanded MPI-2 support.

A new error-checking flag (-ck) in the mpirun utility.

The mpirun utility no longer makes assumptions about how long it will take before a process calls MPI_Init.

T.120 Compatibility mode (HP Visualize 1.2 and NetMeeting 2)

NetMeeting 3 Compatibility mode