WIREDGOV

STFC and Rogue Wave Software have signed a collaboration agreement to work together on tools that will make software development for scientific computing more productive.

Debugging - finding ‘bugs’, errors in the computer code that mean the program doesn’t run properly- is a key taskin software development. Together, Rogue Wave Software and STFC will develop next-generation high performance computing (HPC) software tools to enhance the development capabilities of the latest supercomputers.

Rogue Wave’s TotalView debugger has been deployed on Blue Joule, Blue Wonder and the Emerald Cluster at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. TotalView simplifies and shortens the process of developing, debugging, and optimising the complex code required. It provides a unique combination of tools for pinpointing and fixing hard-to-reproduce bugs, memory leaks and performance issues.

“We need access to the best tools to support our work in developing the next generation of large-scale applications,” says Dr Mike Ashworth, head of applications performance engineering at STFC Daresbury Laboratory. “This new collaboration agreement builds on our existing relationship with Rogue Wave, and will enable us to take full advantage of the computer power provided at our facilities.”

The Hartree Centre at Daresbury Laboratory is a collaboration between STFC’s world-class computational science and engineering staff, and IBM – the world’s largest IT and consulting services company. One of the UK’s leading HPC sites, it’s home to two supercomputers – Blue Joule and Blue Wonder – and dedicated to industrial applications.

The Hartree Centre gives research scientists and industrial clients access to supercomputing facilities to support their R&D work. For them to make the most of their time with these computers, researchers also need access to the right software tools, and writing them is the job of the applications performance engineering team.