PGI New Release Questions

What new features are in the latest release?
What are the latest releases?
How do I get the latest release?
What should I know about the latest releases?
How do I find out if my license will work with the current release?
How do I find out if I qualify for a current release license?
What is a subscription?
How does this release differ from the previous release?
Any known problems with the current releases?
What problems have been fixed in this release?

PGI Release 7.2 Features and Performance

Compiler Optimizations and Features
- Single-core tuning resulting in 3% performance increase over PGI 7.1 on SPECint_base2006 and 4% increase on SPECfp_base2006 when running pure 64-bit on quad-core Intel Xeon 5450 (Penryn)
- Multi-core tuning resulting in a 16% average performance boost on SPECfp_base2006 using auto-parallelization on the quad-core Intel Xeon (Penryn)
- New options and optimizations resulting in a 6% increase in Peak performance on SPECint_rate2006 and 8% increase in Peak performance on SPECfp_rate2006 over PGI 7.1 on AMD Quad-core Opteron (Barcelona)
- Multi-core OpenMP tuning resulting in 5%–7% performance improvements over PGI 7.1 on several commercial science and engineering applications
- Multi-core OpenMP tuning resulting in a 16% increase in SPECompMbase2001 performance over PGI 7.1 on Intel Xeon 5450 (Penryn)
- Enhanced performance on memory-intensive HPC applications using 2MB huge pages through a simple compiler option
- Faster compilation through automated parallel linking on multi-core processors and SMP systems
Development Tools Enhancements
- (NEW) PGPROF multi-core application parallel scalability analysis using hardware counters on Linux
- (NEW) PGPROF and PGDBG HP-MPI support
- PGPROF Graphical User Interface improvements
- (NEW) PGDBG MPICH-2 message queue dumping
- (NEW) PGDBG MSMPI debugging support of DLLs on Windows
- PGDBG MPI debugging support on Linux for shared objects loaded to randomized addresses
- PGDBG and PGPROF are Windows HPC Server 2008 MSMPI ready
- PGDBG symbol load and disassembly performance improvements
- PGDBG improved stack trace capability
- PGDBG improved interoperability with gcc/g++
- PGDBG integration with EMACS through the gud interface on both Linux and Windows
- PGDBG debugging support for OpenMP THREADPRIVATE variables
PGI Visual Fortran Enhancements

(NEW) Support for PGI Visual Fortran integrated with Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio 2008 shell bundled into all configurations of PVF
Continued support for Visual Studio 2005, including support for concurrent use of Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 on the same system
Enhanced variable displays—explore values of strings, aggregates, and multi-dimensional arrays through quick and intuitive mouse rollover or variable window dumps
Improved register displays—track only the subsets of registers you are interested in, easy visual cues on register state changes
Improved Fortran/C interoperability using CVF-compatible /iface:cref
Support for CVF-compatible !DEC$ ATTRIBUTE nomixed_str_len_arg
Support for 18 additional CVF-compatible DFLIB and DFPORT routines
Faster disassembly and symbol loading by the PVF debugger
Improved support for debugging of mixed PVF/VC++ applications through improved accuracy and speed of VC++ symbol processing
(NEW) Support for debugging of 32-bit or 64-bit SUA applications within PVF, including ability to attach to running SUA processes
New Microsoft Open Tools 9 as the default toolchain, with continued support for Open Tools 8 for backward compatibility

New Platforms Support

(NEW)Quad-core Intel Xeon 5450 (Penryn) processor support
Support for Microsoft Server 2008; provisional support for Microsoft HPC Server 2008 Beta

Other Enhancements and Additions

PGI-compiled Visual Numerics IMSL 6.0 Fortran library now available directly from PGI for 64-bit Windows, 32-bit Windows, 64-bit Windows Subsystem for UNIX-based applications (SUA), 32-bit SUA and 32-bit Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) platforms
All PGI products include the latest 64-bit ACML 4.1 AMD Core Math Library from AMD, including assembly-tuned BLAS, LAPACK and FFT routines. AMCL is now a PGI Unified Binary(tm) compiled library.
(NEW) PGI users at sites with network floating licenses can now check out seats for remote use on a laptop while disconnected from the network
Updated hard-copy and online documentation

Complete details are included in the PGI Workstation 7.2 Release Notes, the PGI Visual Fortran 7.2 Release Notes and the PGI CDK 7.2 Release Notes.

What are the latest releases?

The current PGI release versions are

	PGI Workstation and PGI Server for Linux		7.2-5, updated Septermber 5, 2008
	PGI CDK® for Linux		7.2-5, updated Septermber 5, 2008
	PGI Workstation and PGI Server for Windows		7.2-5, updated Septermber 5, 2008
	PGI Workstation and PGI Server for Windows SUA 32		7.2-4, updated August 8, 2008
	PGI Workstation and PGI Server for Windows SUA 64		7.2-4, updated August 8, 2008
	PGI Workstation and PGI Server for Windows SFU 32		7.2-4, updated August 8, 2008
	PGI Visual Fortran�		7.2-5, updated September 5, 2008
	PGI CDK® for Windows		7.2-5, updated September 5, 2008
	PGI Workstation for Mac OS X		7.2-5, updated September 5, 2008

Download the current release or download an older release from the PGI archive.

How do I get the latest release?

PGI products are available in the download section. There is also a link after you log in to your account.

How do I find out if my license will work with the current release?

The license file will have a field with 3.000, 3.100, 3.200, 3.300, 4.000, 4.100, 5.000, 5.100, 5.200, 6.000, 6.100, 6.200, 7.000, 7.100 or 7.200 in it. This is the highest release this license will support. Currently, you should have a 7.100. To use the newest release, you will need to update your license keys for 7.2. Note: Any release prior to the value in the field should work with the license.

How do I find out if I qualify for a current release license?

The subscription information is summarize on your PIN management page. Click a PIN for account information including subscription expiration, release number and current license keys. Note: If you qualify for release 7.2-1, for example, you will also qualify for 7.2-3, 7.2-5, and so on when/if they occur.

What is a subscription?

The PGI Subscription Service entitles the subscriber to new licenses for new releases. Typically, a subscription is valid for one year from date of purchase. New license purchases include 60 days of subscription service. If you did not purchase a subscription when you purchased your license, or if your subscription has expired, you can qualify for the current relase by bringing your subscription current. You may also wish to read the PGI Subscription Service Agreement.

How does this release differ from the previous release?

The 7.2 uses a new type of license file, and this will require using the 11.5 version of pgroupd. Make changes to your lciense server, in order for the 7.2 license file to support older releases as well.
The 7.2 release, currently available in the download section will now support SUSE 10.3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Fedora Core 8, for 64-bit on AMD64 or EM64T.
The current release supports quad-core AMD Barcelona and Dual-core Intel Woodcrest/Penryn systems.
The current release has no limit on the number of threads an OpenMP supports.
The current release supports module load builds, a style of program compilation and linking (like makefiles) that some sites have requested (note: do not confuse this with Fortran 95 modules). Those sites can download and will know how to edit and install the Module TCL script as file 7.2 in a directory named pgi so that
```
module load pgi/7.2
```
works as expected.
Further information can be found in the 7.2 Release Notes located in the documentation section.

Any known problems with the recent releases?

Releases 7.0-3, 7.0-4, 7.0-5, and 7.0-6 have exhibited the following problem in pgCC, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
When executing pgCC, the following message is displayed before the compiler quits
```
This Licensed Software was made available from STMicroelectronics under
a time-limited Beta License. The Beta License expires on "some date".
Any attempt to use this product after "some date" is a violation of the
terms of the PGI End-User License Agreement. 
```
To correct this problem, download the pgCC patch and follow the instructions in the README file.
32-bit executables that use libpthreads may fail on 64-bit Linux systems because libpthreads reduces stack size to 2MB. This is a Linux limitation. libpthreads is used by routines compiled -mp or -Mconcur. 64-bit executables do not experience this limitation.
Some users linking with libpthreads (-mp or -Mconcur) have seen the error message symbol _h_errno, version GLIBC_2.2.5 not defined in file libc.so.6 with link time reference This can be worked around with the environment variable LD_ASSUME_KERNEL export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 or export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 for example.

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