~DJP@computer-science.southampton.ac.uk (David Pritchard) (03/20/89)
Dear UK academic readers of this mailing list,
Rumours have been circulating about something with various names
such as "Parallel Software Initiative" etc. This is the OFFICIAL
announcement of it. Please cut out the form at the back of this message
and return to me if you are at all vaguely interested. My correct email
address is given below, ignore anything contained in the headers above.
Please, also, bring it to the attention of any of your colleagues who
may be interested.
Dear non-UK readers,
Why not ask your national equivalent of DTI to set up a similar
scheme?
Dear non-academic readers,
Sorry, you can afford your own software.
PARALLEL SOFTWARE EVALUATION PROJECT
This is a Department of Trade and Industry, Research and
Technology Initiative, sponsored programme managed by the
University of Southampton, Department of Electronics and Computer
Science.
The aims of the project are to demonstrate and evaluate recently
developed software for parallel processing, to encourage the
widest possible use of the available software, and to collate
users' experiences thereby providing feedback to suppliers and
other users. After an initial setting-up period, the project is
planned to have an evaluation phase of approximately 12 months,
followed by a period in which demonstrations will be maintained.
The programme has arranged bulk licensing and purchasing of
appropriate software directly from the suppliers, and will
provide this to selected Higher Educational Institutions for
evaluation over a 12 month period. As far as possible all
software used in the programme will be commercially available and
fully supported. At present there are 6 packages in the
programme:
HELIOS (operating system),
3L Parallel Languages (Pascal, C, Fortran),
STRAND88 (programming language/ environment),
FLOLIB (Fortran Loop Optimiser + LIBrary),
Predict! (Monte Carlo modelling spreadsheet).
TRANSIM/GECKO (transputer simulator).
and others may be added.
Selected sites would be expected to use and provide feedback on
the software, both to the coordinating centre and possibly at
workshop or seminar events. Some small amount of overheads will
be paid to selected sites for general use related to the project,
on production of a final report.
If your Institution would like to be considered as one of the
evaluation sites, or if you would like to suggest a specific
piece of software for evaluation, please fill out the enclosed
questionaire and return it, before 20th April, to:
Dr David Pritchard
Dept of Electronics & Computer Science
The University
SOUTHAMPTON SO9 5NH
0703 592784 djp%trice@uk.ac.soton.ecs
Parallel Software Evaluation Programme
Name: ____________________________________________________
Department: ____________________________________________________
Institution: ____________________________________________________
Address: ____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
tel: ________________ email: __________________________
Available hardware and operating systems _______________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Do you already have one or more of the software packages (if so,
which?) _________________________________________________________
Would you be interested in all the packages, or only some (please
specify)? _______________________________________________________
Are there any packages which you feel should be included in the
programme? ______________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Please include a short summary of your institutions activities,
and the possible relevance of parallel software, (continue on a
separate sheet if needed). _____________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________