NRAO AIPS++ Users Group Meeting - PRELIMINARY AGENDA Date: 2003-11-12 (Wednesday) Time: 1300 MDT Video Hub: CV-conf Rooms: SOC317/CV311/GB241/TUCN505 AIPS++ Threat Level is: Yellow = Elevated [Its testing time!] Agenda: 1. NAUG News o The NAUG testing season is upon us. Take a look at the AIPS++ Testing page available from the project office page at http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/alma_testing.html This is also linked from the SS2 targets - click on the link under the "Ready" items in the "NAUG Test" column. On this page you will find links to the relevant docs, scripts, and test data. Happy testing! *Discussion: Joe wants to talk about scheduling of the module testing. o SS2 was made available on Oct 27. To use, setup your environment via . /aips++/stable_ss2/aipsinit.sh or source /aips++/stable_ss2/aipsinit.csh and then invoke aips++ as usual. Note that this is indeed just a "snapshot" of the stable as of that date that will remain available as a super-stable basis for testing. There will be the usual stables (and weeklies and dailies) that will incorporate new developments building up to the next SS3 on Dec 1. If your testing uses new functionality you will want to test on the more recent stables etc. I hope this isnt too confusing. 2. AIPS++/ISD Status Report o CVS went live this Monday and developers are now checking in via this. *Note: this should have no significant impact on the NAUG that I know of. o Discussion about distribution has continued in the AIPS++ Systems meetings. Looks like .rpm for Linux (Redhat) may be available by Nov 1. We will also make ISO images available (sometime in Dec?). This should allow the ALMA testers to get their SS4 distributions on Jan 15. 3. ALMA o Our NAUG/ALMA testing should be underway. Current testing will be on the latest stable or the SS2 (stable_ss2) with the goal of getting any needed fixes into the SS3 (01Dec03) stable. December testing will build to the critical SS4 (15Jan03) which will go out to ALMA testers. o Debra has compiled a user test definition for Jan 2004 testing. It consists of four datasets and four NAUG testers (Shepherd, Myers, Zavala, and Brisken) and four ALMA testers. See: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~dshepher/alma/offline.tests/ Latest version is Jan04.TestPlan.26sep04 4. EVLA o Ed has been testing and benchmarking wide-field imaging. See stuff at ftp://ftp.cv.nrao.edu/NRAO-staff/efomalon/aips++/ and his report at http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/testlogs/2003-11-07-fomalont.txt Summary: "AIPS is about 3 times faster than AIPS++ for this widefield example. The computer has 4 Gigs of memory. I set the system.resources.memory: 900 however, on execution 400 Megs at most was the largest amount of memory used." This is in line with the AIPS++ experience. From Sanjay: "The measured AIPS++:AIPS ratio for single facet imaging was close 2:1. So there is extra overhead, when we do wide-field imaging - but it's encouraging. In the last cycle we did identify that there is about 3 times more I/O happening in AIPS++ while gridding/de-gridding. Given that the major remaining runtime cost of the deconvolution algorithms is due to gridding, my estimate is that once we fix the gridder (Kumar is making changes for other reasons which I think will fix this problem) most of this factor of 3 will erode. I would say that lets do these tests again after this fix is in place. I am very hopeful that imager will then be very close to imagr (to the point the extra 'e' will start to look like the next major difference! :))." There are good prospects for improvement as Sanjay and Kumar point out. From Kumar: "There is a memory based multiple-gridder that grids all the data once for all facets...so it does the I/O once instead of n times (for n facets) hence if one used that (by using imager.setoptions(ftmachine='wfmemoryft' ....) one gets the advantage of a factor of 2 or 3 !" This is mostly an EVLA target (wide-field) but the gridding improvements will be general (just as ALMA improvements have greatly helped the wide-field case over previous dismal numbers)! 5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items o Walter will lead a visualization discussion o George and Kumar will present some ideas on unifying data selection 6. AIPS++ Developments - see latest targets and info at Project Office: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ o SS2 Targets -- see Project Office page for testing info. NOTE: These are all old. Some updates on particular items: *Viewer - There is some documentation under 'Graphical User Interface' under the viewerdisplaypanel in the URM (see daily docs) http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/user/Refman/Refman.html and a more comprehensive description in the Volume 1 - Basic Tools section of Getting Results http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/cookbook/cbvol1/cbvol1.html under 3. Display of Data (e.g. 3.10.2 Blinking Between Images). Is this sufficient to get people going? In particular, the GUI action decriptions in the blink section build upon previous sections, which I think is OK. Note that if we want more comprehensive cookbook-like info on these the NAUG will probably have to devote some resources to it (volunteers?). *Viewer: parameters added to cursor readout. See viewer documentation in http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/user/Refman/Refman.html STATUS: NOT AVAILABLE THIS RELEASE o SS3 Targets -- not deployed yet, see Project Office page for plans. *NOTE - The development plan is at: http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/devplan_19.pdf Comments on any of these are welcome. 7. Upcoming meetings and deadlines: o 2003 Nov 14-15 ALMA SSR face-to-face (Socorro, NM) o 2003 Dec 1 AIPS++ SS3 o 2004 Jan 15 AIPS++ SS4 o 2004 Jan 15 ALMA User Testing begins? o 2004 Apr 1 ALMA Release 1.1 o 2004 Jun 1 ALMA CDR2 = Judgement Day! The agendas for past NAUG meetings are archived at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/agenda/ The minutes for past NAUG meetings are archived at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/minutes/