bart@asiago.cs.wisc.edu (Bart Miller) (11/27/90)
Announcing the availability of Release 3.0 of the IPS-2 Parallel Program Measurement System: IPS-2 is a performance measurement system for parallel and distributed programs. It can provide a large amount of performance data about the execution of a parallel program, and this information is organized so that access to it is easy and intuitive. IPS-2 also provides various high-level analyses and a powerful, graphic user interface and display. Programmers do not have to modify their programs to use IPS-2 (there is only a slightly modified compiling procedure). The major addition to Release 3.0 includes support for external data collectors and external metrics (which allows including data from kernel, network, and hardware). A paper on this feature will appear in the ACM PPoPP Conference in April. 3.0 also includes various improvements to the user interface, and bug fixes. IPS-2 runs on the VAX, DECstation, and Sequent Symmetry multiprocessor -- and a program could be running on a heterogeneous combination of these machines. Both message-passing and shared-memory communications are supported. The user interface runs under X-windows, and supports both B&W and color displays. A Cray Y/MP version should be available by summer. An overview of IPS-2 appears in the April 1990 issue of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. A Users Guide and an Installation Guide are also available. If you have Internet access, you can ftp a Postscript copy of the Users Guide. Use ftp to access asiago.cs.wisc.edu, login "anonymous". The file is called "usersguide.ps.Z" and is in "compress" format. You can use "uncompress" or "zcat" to read the file. If you want more information, mail bart@cs.wisc.edu. A license agreement and small tape distribution fee are necessary to obtain the software for research purposes. We can send copies of the license agreement via e-mail (Postscript) or regular mail. --bart miller uw-madison cs dept bart@cs.wisc.edu