System Software R&D
National HPCC Software Exchange (NHSE)
Objective
The overall objective of the NHSE is to promote software sharing within the HPCC community. Supporting objectives are as follows:
- Identification of sharing opportunities within the HPCC program.
- Establishment of a distributed set of discipline-oriented repositories populated with high-quality, highly parallel software.
- Successful interoperation and sharing of software between those repositories.
Approach
- Software repositories that use a standardized data model can share their cataloging data via the Internet.
- Electronic shrink-wrap (i.e. "click-wrap") and current access control technologies can be used to help distribute software via the Internet.
- "Software reviews" increase the exposure of the software that they describe and save time for end-users.
- Domain-specific software repositories maintained by experts in those domains offer a higher level of quality.
Accomplishments
- Released version 1.2 of the Repository in a Box (RIB) toolkit.
- Established NHSE partnerships - NSF’s NPACI Programming Tools and Environments (PTE) thrust area and Alliance Enabling Technologies Parallel Computing Team.
- Prototype of the access control and licensing mechanism being tested.
- Provided assistance to the DoDMOD MSRCs in setting up software repositories Computational Technology Areas.
- Extended Parallel Tools Library (PTLIB) review of parallel debugging and performance analysis tools to focus on performance analysis tools for MPI programming.
- PTLIB began publication of the weekly PT-digest, an electronic newsletter for the parallel tools community.
Significance
- Repository In a Box (RIB) toolkit allows interoperation of Agency software repositories (e.g., NASA, DoD, DoE, NSF) thus eliminating redundant efforts.
- Software can be distributed internally or externally from the Agencies while enforcing strict access controls and license agreements.
- Time spent locating and evaluating current software packages can be decreased.
- Software related to specific fields of science can be organized into Domain Specific Repositories that are maintained by experts in those domains.
Point of Contact
Paul McMahan
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
mcmahan@cs.utk.edu
423-974-3735
http://www.nhse.org/