SimGrid (3.6) unstable; urgency=low
- Simix
- * completely rewrote this module to allow parallel execution.
+ Java and Ruby:
+ * Bindings now constitute their own package, separated from the main one.
+ Rational: reduce our maintainance nightmare by reducing the module coupling.
+ They will soon be released on their own on gforge. In the meanwhile:
+ svn co svn://scm.gforge.inria.fr/svn/simgrid/contrib/trunk/simgrid-java
+ svn co svn://scm.gforge.inria.fr/svn/simgrid/contrib/trunk/simgrid-ruby
+
+ GRAS: It is not considered as stable anymore, but experimental. Sorry.
+ * It's not quite deprecated for now because we have no replacement,
+ but it may soon become the case.
+
+ MSG
+ * New function MSG_comm_get_status(). MSG_comm_test() and MSG_comm_testany()
+ only say if a communication is finished, no matter whether it succeeded or
+ failed. You can call MSG_comm_get_status() to know the status of a finished
+ communication.
+ * New function MSG_task_dsend() to send a task and detach it. When a
+ communication is detached, you are never notified of its success or failure
+ and the memory is released automatically once it is finished. This function
+ is useful when you don't care about the end nor the success of a
+ communication.
+ * Change the prototypes of action replay. Sorry for inconvenience,
+ but this is really more efficient this way (and to adapt your code,
+ you just have to fix the initialization, that shouldn't be too long)
+ * Kill the braindead MSG_task_refcount_dec() function. I guess nobody
+ ever managed to do anything useful with it.
+ * New function MSG_comm_testany(). Similarly to MSG_comm_waitany(), it
+ takes a dynar of communications. It returns immediately and gives the
+ index of a finished communication (if any).
+ * New example: a basic implementation of the Chord P2P algorithm.
+
+ SURF
+ * New model for multi-core CPUs. You can now use the core attribute to
+ precise the number of cores of a host. This is a basic model. Every
+ process running on the host receives at most the power provided in
+ the DTD (throughput<=power). Total throughput of process cannot exceed
+ power * num_cores.
+ * New peer tag. This peer tag creates a tiny AS comprising a host and a
+ router linked by an up-link and a down-link (possibly asymmetrical).
+ This kind of pattern allows to easily build last-mile model style platforms.
+ Aggregating such patterns in a rule-based AS is thus the technique of
+ choice for modeling large peer-to-peer/volunteer computing/cloud platforms.
+ * New model for Vivaldi routing. We transformed the Vivaldi network model
+ into a Vivaldi routing model (based on the rule-based model). This allows to
+ combine Vivaldi based latencies with last-mile platforms.
+
+ SIMIX
+ * Introduce a new context factory "raw", highly inspirated from the
+ ucontext factory, but using manually crafted functions in assembly to
+ do the work in an efficient manner.
+ * Allow to change the used context factory at run time, not only at
+ compilation time. Use --cfg=contexts/factory:raw for maximal speed.
+ * Add an option --cfg=contexts/stacksize:N to set the stack size of the user
+ contextes at runtime (only with raw contexts or ucontexts).
+ * Completely rewrote this module to allow parallel execution of user
+ processes. Use --cfg=contexts/nthreads:N to execute user processes
+ with N parallel threads (the default is 1, meaning no parallelism).
+ * Allow to decide dynamically between sequential and parallel modes.
+ When nthreads > 1, you can use --cfg=contexts/threshold:P to run the user
+ processes in parallel only when their number is greater than or equal to P
+ (the default is 2).
+ * Added a check for NaN of IEEE754 infinite in the double entries of
+ the smx_user.c file
+
+ XBT
+ * New command line option: if you pass --cfg=verbose-exit:0, SimGrid
+ won't output the state of processes when interrupted with Ctrl-C
+ * Add a new function xbt_dynar_to_array that transforms a dynar into a
+ NULL-terminated array. This may solve backward compatibility issues
+ due to the change to return type of SD_simulate. See also:
+ http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/simgrid-user/2010-December/002206.html
+ * Add new macros with variable number of arguments.
+ - in xbt/log.h: XBT_DEBUG, XBT_VERB, XBT_INFO, etc.
+ - in xbt/asserts.h: xbt_assert
+ - in xbt/cunit.h: xbt_test_{add,fail,assert,log}
+ - in xbt/ex.h: THROWF and RETHROWF.
+ Define XBT_USE_DEPRECATED if you want to use the old numbered macros like
+ INFO1, INFO2, etc.
+ * Change xbt_die() to accept a format string with arguments, just like printf.
+ * New data structure: xbt_lib_t, like a dict but more general and with better
+ memory handling.
+
+ INSTR
+ * New configuration options
+ Options triva/categorized and triva/uncategorized can be used to generate
+ graph configuration files for Triva visualization tool.
+ * Configuration option tracing/platform is renamed to tracing/categorized
+ * XBT logging makes tracing error checks easier, new root log hierarchy: instr
+ * New TRACE_user_link_variable interface:
+ User provides the name of the link and the tracing variable to attach to it
+ * the declaration of tracing categories must be done after the environment
+ creation
+ * simpler tracing interface, just one way to declare categories
+ TRACE_category or TRACE_category_with_color, it is up to you
+ * links in the trace file are again identified by their names
+ * trace contains the full platform hierarchy exactly as declared using the ASes
+ * Options tracing/msg/[task|process]:1 groups the process by hosts
+ for both cases, tasks and processes must have names that are unique during the simulation
+ these options generate traces that are suited to gantt-charts, such as the space-time view of Paje
+ * The experimental option tracing/msg/volume is deprecated
+ its functionality may be reincorporated if needed
+ * Buffering
+ The tracing generates a trace file with unordered timestamped events,
+ because of the way the core simulator (surf) works. A script available
+ at the tools directory (fix-paje-trace.sh) can be used to put the events
+ in order. We have changed the tracing so it can generate ordered timestamped
+ events in the final trace, but depending on the simulator (and how much time
+ is simulated) that can lead to a huge memory utilization. It is desactivated
+ by default, but it can be activated using the --cfg=tracing/buffer:1 switch.
+
+ Build Infrastructure
+ * Define a SIMGRID_VERSION macro in simgrid_config.h.
+ - We are trying hard to keep the API stable, but it may happen that
+ some things change (we're a research project after all, not a
+ nuclear plant operating system). If such things should happen, you
+ could rely on that macro to adapt.
+ - current value: 30600 for 3.06.00, aka 3.6
+ * Define macro MAKE_SIMGRID_VERSION(major, minor, patch) to help building
+ a number that can be compared with SIMGRID_VERSION.
+ * Add a build option -Denable_debug (set to ON by default): when set to OFF,
+ assertions and verbose/debug logging events are disabled at compile time.
-- Da SimGrid team <simgrid-devel@lists.gforge.inria.fr>
