~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). _____________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________