Open Source SpeedShop Project Opened

drjzzz writes "Federal Computer Week reports that the National Nuclear Security Administration of the US Department of Energy is paying about $3 million of a $6.8 million collaboration between Silicon Graphics and the Universities of Maryland and Wisconsin to develop an open-source version of SpeedShop, SGI's performance analysis tools. This will redress what a SGI engineer characterizes as scarce analysis software for Linux. A "Pro" version will also be developed and sold by SGI. Maybe even those of us without access to ASCI White can tweak our boxen to do 3D simulations of complete nuclear detonations, NNSA's main interest. Now that's what I call homeland security and real respect for the spirit of the second amendment."

A legit question

[Erect Horsecock]

Does SGI have any customers other than the US govt? Everytime they are mentioned in the news it has to do with a branch of the federal government or the military buying a cluster. I know on their website they mention oil/gas research and other scientific fields as customers, but does anybody buy as much sgi gear as Uncle Sam?

I do have to admit that SGI is the only company that has made me interested in Itanium in any kind of way.

Re:A legit question

[floydman]

Actually we are one of the biggrst SGI customers, having over 2K of their SGI workstations, and over 10 clusters each at least 128 nodes.

I am sorry though i cant tell you the company name (wish i could), but SGI does have a wide customer base from where i stand, and i think they are making good money.

Re:A legit question

[Erect Horsecock]

There is no question about the money, they are at least making enough to stay afloat I believe.
Will your company stay on SGI gear after they kill off MIPS and Irix and go Linux/IA64? Or are you "solution shopping" for the future?

Re:A legit question

[floydman]

Actually we do have Linux/IA64 gear from SGI

Re:A legit question

[Christopher Anthony]

Actually, SGI is not profitable now, although they are doing much better than they were a few years ago. In the last of the MIPS only years they had trouble because they had lost focus and their products didn't have the performance edge they had had before.

I bet most of their customers are looking forward to the time when they introduce Itanium workstations. According to SGI people, they have MIPS binary compatibility, and the old MIPS programs actually run faster on Itanium processors with a runtime bina

Re:A legit question

[presearch]

I am sorry though i can't tell you the company name (wish i could)..

SecurIT Informatique Inc. Montréal, Québec?

(security is everyone's responsibility)

Distrobuted computing work

[djsmiley]

Semi off topic but here goes.

I once did a distrobuted computing project whom wouldn't allow a linux version of their software to be created due to the software people somewhere in the system having such control as that the code could not be shared by a lower company. (Bit weird but stick with me).

It wasn't nuclear anything, it was cancer research, ~(stick with me some more)~ but still it all comes down to lots of data to process in the end. Distrobuted computing projects do this extrely well (As we all kn

Lack of nuclears?!

[PickyH3D]

I hope that is UWI - Madison, which actually has a nuclear engineering department.

Much to most of the Slashdot communities pleasure, I am sure, there are not many nuclear engineering schools left [univsource.com].

This should be developed by one of the nuclear engineering firms, such as AREVA and not a bunch of students, regardless of whether it is to be open source or not (which most code in the nuclear field ends up being that is used like this).

Re:Lack of nuclears?!

[Scott7477]

After reading the article, it appears that this software would be good for improving the performance of any *nix code rather than being limited to nuclear testing related apps. Theoretically, this could speed up development and improve the quality of all open source apps. Here's a chunk of the press release FYI: "In a joint effort with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to make more sophisticated open-source performance tools available to government labor

Re:Lack of nuclears?!

[PickyH3D]

huh. Well what do ya know. What was the writer talking about with the linking of the other nuclear related stuff. This has nothing to do with that, excluding the sponsor.

SGI and University

[superpulpsicle]

Anytime I hear a company is teaming up with any university to do any project, it just scares me.

Too many times I hear of stories where students time and effort can't be capitalized. They work just end up counting toward school property.

funny, I would not have said this

[oo_waratah]

"a staple on IRIX®, the world's most technically advanced UNIX® high-performance computing environment."