Firefly and PC GAMESS-related discussion club

 
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Alex Granovsky
gran@classic.chem.msu.su

The 64-bit version of Firefly is indeed in our "todo" list.
I think it will be available in a year or or in a couple of years.

There are multiple challenges in this transition that should be
solved. Perhaps, first 64-bit versions will only support a part of
Firefly's features.

We did similar things before. In 2000, we have partially ported
PC GAMESS to first Itanium processors (the key functionality only)
and Itanium version of PC GAMESS was then demonstrated on SC’2000:

http://access.ncsa.illinois.edu/Releases/00Releases/001102.IA-64.html

This version was soon abandoned because first Itaniums were rather
slow CPUs.

A couple of years ago I have started the porting process again,
this time for Firefly/x64. I spent 2 month and ported ca. one third
part of the code. This was extremely tiresome :( so soon enough I
switched to more challenging and interesting problems.

Now the pressure we feel is much stronger so that we certainly finish
porting to x64.

Kind regards,
Alex Granovsky








On Tue Oct 11 '16 11:05am, Thomas Pijper wrote
----------------------------------------------
>Dear Veinardi,

>If you plan on upgrading +/- every 5 years, I'd advise you to use a Linux distribution that offers LTS (long term support) for that duration. An example of such a distribution is Debian. Of course, LTS is much less of an issue if your computation system is not connected to the internet (as security is the foremost reason to keep your system up-to-date).

>As for your question regarding 32-bit support, this is indeed a problem that is looming over the horizon. Personally, I'm not yet worried about the availability of new CPU device drivers (which are maintained as a part of the Linux kernel) or popular libraries such as GCC. Instead, I expect that the problem rather lies with some distributions starting to phase out 32-bit support. For example, Canonical has disclosed that Ubuntu 16.10 will not be available as a 32-bit installation. Furthermore, version 18.10 (scheduled for October 2018) will fully end support for 32-bit software. Likewise, 32-bit libraries for some MPI implementation may also start to disappear in the coming years.

>On the other hand, I speculate that when some distros end their 32-bit support, any 32-bit users will just migrate to other distros. The popularity increase of those distros may then cause them to keep their 32-bit support for a while longer. The same may happen with MPI implementations, although I should note that the different MPI implementations do not always perform equally well -- if some of these were to drop 32-bit support, I hope it'd not the better performing ones.

>Hope this helps.
>
>
>Kind regards,
>Thom
>
>
>
>On Sat Oct 8 '16 7:56pm, Veinardi Suendo wrote
>----------------------------------------------
>>Dear Thom,

>>Thank you very much for your advice and suggestion. Finally, after try and error we succeeded to upgrade our system to CentOS 7.1.1503 with Intel MPI 4.1.0 to work on i7 6700K. In the beginning, we had problems due to the lack of 32 bit libraries on CentOS 7, however after installing compatible glibc, nss-softokn-freebl and libgcc libraries we could eliminated all errors.

>>Honestly, now I am wandering what distro of linux will be the most suitable computing environment for Firefly in the future that can manage to extract all advantages of new processor. The availability of 32 bit libraries may become a limitation. Hopefully, I could upgrade my system every 5 years due to the budget limitation. I believe Alex can give us the best suggestion.

>>Best regards,

>>Veinardi

>>On Sun Oct 2 '16 9:37pm, Thomas Pijper wrote
>>--------------------------------------------
>>>Dear Veinardi,

>>>Yes, this will work. However, you must use a 32-bit version of Intel MPI. Unfortunately, Intel has removed 32-bit support as of version 5.0 of their MPI implementation. The last version that supports 32-bit is Intel MPI version 4.1 Update 3.

>>>A note for Windows users: free Intel MPI runtimes are also available for Windows. Also here, version 4.1 Update 3 is the latest version that can be used with Firefly.
>>>
>>>
>>>Kind regards,
>>>Thom
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On Fri Sep 30 '16 8:06pm, Veinardi Suendo wrote
>>>-----------------------------------------------
>>>>Dear All,

>>>>I am just curious that Intel has released a free MPI Library Runtime for Linux (https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-mpi-library). Is it enough to run firefly code completely (i.e. Firefly version 8.2.0 download links, Linux/Intel MPI, dynamically linked version) or is it necessary to purchase the complete version. I am just wondering because to run firefly we do not need to compile anything but the mpi library.

>>>>Thank you very much in advance,

>>>>Best regards,

>>>>Veinardi