Kuldip Oberoi's Blog

When is the next FCS release of Sun Studio?

A question that I often get. Until today, my response has been that our latest FCS release that supports all our platforms is Sun Studio 12 (released in the summer of 2007) and folks can get access to features going into the next major release via the Sun Studio Express program, which puts out builds every 3 months or so. However, with the announcement of the Sun Studio 12 Update 1 Early Access program, I can now say it is right-around-the-corner! As an integrated toolchain of compilers, code/memory/thread debuggers, performance analysis, IDE, and optimized libs, we have something new for most folks.

Our Early Access (EA) program invites C, C++, and Fortran developers on OpenSolaris, Solaris, & Linux operating systems to take our feature-complete build for a spin and provide the product team feedback that we use to evaluate readiness for release as well as gather input for future development. Of course, as a signal to our community that an FCS release is coming soon, it allows users to began the evalution towards adoption with their projects.

What’s involved in the program?

• Download Sun Studio Express 3/09 (this is the EA build)
• Join the discussion in the Sun Studio 12 Update 1 Early Access forum
• File any RFEs or bugs at http://bugreport.sun.com/bugreport/
• Take 5 minutes to fill out a survey (available on Wednesday, March 25)

Who would interested in this program? Sophisticated best-of-the-best developers who…

• Develop C, C++, & Fortran apps on OpenSolaris, Solaris, and/or Linux (RHEL, SUSE, Ubuntu, etc.)
• Want their apps to scream on UltraSPARC, SPARC64, Intel x86, and AMD x86 architectures
• Need the best tools availabel to help their apps take advantage of all those cores / threads
• Want tooling that utilize DTrace technology to identify app/system performance bottlenecks
• Need a state-of-the-art IDE, including remote development capabilities
• Want analysis tools to tune their cluster/MPI applications

Check out the README for more details on what’s new.

Looking forward to your feedback!

Sun and the OpenSolaris community today announced the immediate, and unrestricted, availability of the latest version of the distro- OpenSolaris 2008.11. Previously, I used it as my alternative OS, either via VirtualBox or on a dedicated demo laptop. However, I just installed a release candidate build of 2008.11 as my main day-to-day environment- development , email, music, movies, IM, etc. — it’s all in there!

It has this cool backup/snapshot utility called Time Slider, which utilizes OpenSolaris technologies such as ZFS. Accidentally delete a file or destroy its contents? No problem. Think of it as an integrated system-wide SCM that is always working, behind the scenes. The best thing about it- the Time Slider interface is integrated into the GNOME windowing system, which makes it TRIVIAL to use. There has been a justifiable knock that Sun technologies are innovative, but difficult to use by mere mortals. Myth busted!

Check out this short, but very well done, intro video done by our OpenSolaris evangelists:

CommunityOne is a conference sponsored by Sun Microsystems focused on open source innovation and implementation. It brings together developers, technologists and students for technical education and exchange. Check out the conference web site at:

http://developers.sun.com/events/communityone

There will be two conferences in 2009:

CommunityOne East – March 18-19, 2009 (NY)
CommunityOne West – June 1-2, 2009 (SF)

See the conference web site for more complete details, but there is a “Native Development” track for content on C/C++/Fortran development, OpenMP/MPI, etc. and it will be great to see OUR community participate. The deadline to submit a proposal for a technical session (50 minutes), panel (50 minutes), or a 5-minute lightening talk is coming up quick- Monday, December 15.

http://www.eventreg.com/sun/communityone09/cfp

Participate in one or both conferences!  If you are short on time- submit a proposal for a 5-minute lightening talk and let us know about what you’re working on.

Hope to see you there!

“The Autumn Wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
swaggering boisterously

His face is weather beaten
He wears a hooded sash
With his silver hat about his head
And a bristly black moustache

He growls as he storms the country
A villain big and bold
And the trees all shake and quiver and quake
As he robs them of their gold

The Autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun
He’ll knock you ’round and upside down
And laugh when he’s conquered and won”

I’m ready- go Raiders!

The growing popularity of High Performance Computing (HPC) environments, which are based on supercomputers and computer clusters, is being driven not only by (P)erformance, but also by the (P)roductivity in using these environments. In addition to the expansion in traditional scientific and engineering market segments, HPC is being adopted in Enterprise IT segments, such as Finance and Business Intelligence.

With its AMD x86, Intel x86, and Sun UltraSPARC-based servers, Sun continues to be a leader on the hardware side. However, as a systems company, we are also investing into software and now offer complete HPC software stacks on both Solaris and Linux OSs. For developers, the freely available Sun Studio compilers and tools offers up record-setting C, C++, and Fortran compilers, support for MPI and OpenMP development, performance analysis tools, and optimized math routines (e.g. LAPACK, BLAS, etc.). Central to this HPC stack is a high-performance, scalable, MPI (Message Passing Interface) runtime. MPI is the dominant communication paradigm for parallel applications written for clusters.

Today we are announcing the availability of Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.0, which now supports Linux distributions as well as Solaris and OpenSolaris OSs, and has the following highlights:

• Based on the open source Open MPI project, version 1.3
• For the first time, available and supported on Linux (RHEL 4&5, SLES 9&10) as well as Solaris 10 OS
• Available with the next OpenSolaris OS release
• Supported with Sun Studio compilers and tools and GNU/gcc toolchains on both Solaris and Linux OSs
• MPI profiling support with Sun Studio Analyzer, plus support for VampirTrace and MPI PERUSE
• Infiniband multi-rail support
• Mellanox ConnectX Inifiniband support
• DTrace provider support on Solaris
• Enhanced performance and scalability, including processor affinity support
• Support for InifiBand, GbE, 10GbE, and Myrinet interconnect

With available Sun support options, download a free, and unrestricted, copy of Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.0 today!

We are thrilled to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta! You can learn more, review the release notes, and download a copy here.

Available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris, NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta extends its dynamic language support to now include PHP! Mix in improved JavaScript development features, with client-side debugging within FireFox and Internet Explorer browsers, along with HTML and CSS support, and you have a first class environment for server- and client-side web application development. What about Ruby and Rails? Check out our support for Rails 2.1.0 and improved support for the Rake build tool.

Most applications, whether written in Java, PHP, or otherwise, have a need to work with a database, so we’ve made numerous enhancements in this area. The Database Explorer allows you to make connections, view/edit schemas, and query your DB. We now have SQL editor code completion, SQL history to view/insert statements, and the ability to quickly insert custom snippets / queries.

Compare this Beta against your current PHP / JavaScript / Ruby IDE or text editor. We’ve worked very hard to offer support that IDE users expect, including support for various SCMs, refactoring, code intelligent editor, and FTP support, but with a responsiveness and small download size (starting at 18MB) that text editors possess.

For those developing C/C++ applications, eliminate extra steps to move and rebuild by using the remote development features in this Beta.

With Java support, did we stop with the recent NetBeans plugin in the JavaFX SDK? We were just getting started! New support for Groovy and Grails, compile-on-save / deploy-on-change, and enhancements for Spring, Hibernate, JSF, and JPA. GlassFish v3 Prelude, which is small, fast, and modular using OSGi, is also included. You’ll be amazed at how fast this container is.

Using Eclipse? Take NetBeans 6.5 Beta for a spin by utilizing the Eclipse Project Importer.

Run into a bug or want to file an RFE? Let us know! Questions? Join and participate in the NetBeans community.

Most importantly- code smart, and code well.

Parallelism is here, today.

From 128 hardware threads in UltraSPARC T2-based Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 to the 32-core AMD Barcelona-based Sun Fire X4600 and 16-core Intel Xeon-based Sun Fire X4450, hardware parallelism is not our future, but our present. In a shared memory environment, how does software take advantage of hardware parallelism?

1. Application consolidation via virtualization such as Sun xVM
2. Application deployment in multithreaded containers such as web and app servers, including Glassfish
3. Creating multithreaded applications using POSIX and OpenMP, simplified with advanced tooling as in Sun Studio software

Multithreaded development is not simple- developers have to avoid common pitfalls, such as data race and deadlock conditions. In addition, understanding thread performance and interaction becomes important. Because of this, we added tooling in Sun Studio 12 around these areas. In addition to POSIX threads (pthreads) support, we have support (compiler, debugger, analyzer, etc.) for OpenMP, which is a declarative way of doing multithreaded development. While easing development and allowing parallelization around loop structures, OpenMP didn’t provide as much benefit for task-based threading models, until now.

Available today for OpenSolaris 2008.05, Solaris and Linux OSs, Sun Studio Express 7/08, the most recent preview build of the next production release now features…

1. OpenMP 3.0 support
2. Performance Analysis of MPI applications
3. Updated IDE based on NetBeans IDE 6.1
4. Improved Performance for Intel, AMD, UltraSPARC, and SPARC64-based systems

Check out the release notes for complete details and download a free, unrestricted, copy today!

For those doing cluster development using MPI, this release integrates with Sun HPC ClusterTools, based on OpenMPI, and includes new analysis features. Check out the screenshots:

Today at EuroPython 2008, Ted Leung (Dynamic Languages & Tools Architect at Sun) and Frank Wierzbicki (Jython Project Lead working at Sun) announced that the NetBeans IDE will be supporting Python and Jython in future releases. The latest release, NetBeans IDE 6.1, is already multilingual- supporting Java, C/C++, JavaScript, and Ruby/JRuby. In addition, the latest milestone build, NetBeans 6.5 M1, features support for PHP developers.

Python is not new to Sun- with a long history of use, including with the new Image Packaging System (IPS) utilized in OpenSolaris OS. Python is available, today, for OpenSolaris 2008.05 via its pkg.opensolaris.org repository and in Cool Stack for Solaris 10 systems. With our recent history of engagement with the Ruby/JRuby and Rails communities, we look forward in increasing our participation in the Python communities.

At the core of the effort to bring Python/Jython support to the NetBeans IDE, is the formation of the NBPython Project, led by community member Allan Davis. For developers wishing to contribute, sign up for the development mailing list.

In addition, the Sun Developer Network (SDN) is also launching the Python Developer Center and is planning to feature Python/Jython technologies in future Sun Tech Days events, a 15-city world tour designed to educate developers in local markets on various technologies.

We congratulate the Eclipse community on the upcoming Ganymede Simultaneous Release.

The NetBeans community has always been focused on a simple goal- to provide a superior development environment that assists users in creating high-quality applications in less time. With 80% user growth in the past 12 months and numerous industry accolades, including the Jolt Award for Best Development Environment and Developer.com’s Best Development Tool recognition, the hallmark ease-of-use quality within the NetBeans IDE is making progress towards this goal. From SOA functionality, including the Composite Application Service Assembly Editor and BPEL and XSLT Designers, to the Swing GUI Builder (formerly Project Matisse), the NetBeans IDE provides numerous visual editors to simplify desktop, web, enterprise, and mobile application development. Add in the Database Explorer, and n-tier development has never been easier.

While being a leader in the Java community, the NetBeans IDE has extended its ease-of-use functionality to other languages including Ruby/JRuby, C/C++, JavaScript, and with the recent arrival of NetBeans IDE 6.1, a preview version of PHP tooling. Combined with functionality provided by NetBeans partners, such as iReport (graphical report tool) from JasperSoft and codeBeamer (ALM solution) from Intland Software, NetBeans users have a complete, productive, environment.

With the advent of Ruby/JRuby support in recent NetBeans releases, we have received a lot of encouraging feedback with our entry into dynamic language tooling. From NetBeans to Glassfish to OpenSolaris 2008.05, Sun works to provide a superior systems-based platform for developers to deliver their innovations.

We’re just getting started with Ruby and will shortly be announcing a NetBeans community effort around another dynamic language- so stay tuned!