University of Oxford Parallel Applications Centre

The Oxford BSP Toolset and Profiling system (v 1.1.2)

Version 1.1.2 is a minor release of the Oxford BSP toolset. It contains a beta release of a TCP/IP version of the library, and a version of the library for the Transtech Paramid. This release includes some bug fixes to v1.1 (see the bug report list for more details).

The first official release of the Oxford BSP Toolset which conformed to the BSPlib library was issued in June 1997 (programs written for the Oxford BSP library version 1.2 will also work with the toolset). However, earlier beta releases of the library that conformed to a preliminary BSPlib definition have been available since April 1996. All the sources of the library, and accompanying profiling tools are freely available by anonymous FTP; details below.

To subscribe to a mailing list for toolset users, mail bsplib-users-request@comlab.ox.ac.uk. Any bug reports should be sent to bsplib-bugs@comlab.ox.ac.uk, in a style similar to the active bug report list which is kept here.

Table of contents

1. How to get the toolset
2. Available platforms
3. Literate source
4. What's new in this release
5. Coming soon

How to get the toolset

The source distribution of the library and profiling tools are available as a gzipped tar archive from here. Previous releases are available by anonymous FTP in the following directory. Separate binary releases of the software for different platforms may appear at a later date/release. A copy of the installation guide, which comes bundled with the distribution, can also be downloaded from here.

Available platforms

Two factors guide the installation of the toolset: (1) the machine architecture and operating system release; and (2) the type of device used as the communication medium. To date, the tested architectures are:

The tested communication devices are shown below. It should be noted, that only a small subset of the cross-product of architectures and devices are valid builds of the toolset.

Literate source

The Oxford BSP toolset was written using a home grown literate programming system (see litToTex and litToPgm). The code is written using LaTeX, with program text placed between the \begin{code} and \end{code} delimeters.

A Postscript file of the source (with LaTeX comments) of the core library can be found here; the source of the level-1 library that contains the collective communications can be found here.

What's new in this release (v1.1 and v1.1.2)

1. A beta release of the TCP/IP implementation of the library.
2. An implementation of the library for the Transtech Paramid.
3. An implementation of the library for the Cray T3E and Origin 2000.
4. The library partially conforms to the BSPlib standard. The only differences are that registration and setting of tag sizes takes effect at the point of invocation, and not at the end of the superstep.
5. Note: The major differences between the new BSPlib document, and the initial proposal are a few name changes. The routines provided in the initial proposal are still provided as a compatibility mode in the library.
6. A call graph profiling tool.

Coming soon

1. Distributed load daemon for the TCP/IP implementation of the library. i.e., the daemon ensures that a BSPlib job is started on the least loaded machines in a network.
2. New platforms: Windows NT, Fujitsu AP1000
3. Shrinking of the profiling data output

The Oxford BSP Toolset is a product of the BSP Programming Environment, a UK Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council project in the Portable Software Tools for Parallel Architectures Programme. Our partners in this enterprise are British Aerospace Sowerby Research Centre and NAG Ltd.

© Oxford Parallel 1995, 1996, 1997
Please send comments to Jon Hill Need more information? See: What's New in BSP Worldwide