6. Software and Modules

Introduction

We endeavour to provide an environment suitable for the development of high quality scientific software. Our machines therefore provide highly tuned C(++) and Fortran compilers, along with equally efficient mathematical (BLAS, etc) and communication libraries (MPI, SHMEM, etc). We also provide a range of debugging and software analysis tools to aid code development and some visualisation packages for post-processing work.

Our machines also have a wide range of application software packages installed, applicable to such fields as chemistry, environmental modelling, engineering and bioinformatics. For users interested in accessing our machines "over the grid", a range of grid middleware is on the systems and for metacomputing, suitable implementations of MPI are available.

More detailed information on the software we provide can be found at www.csar.cfs.ac.uk/user_information/software. Tools, compilers and utilities have their own section at www.csar.cfs.ac.uk/user_information/tools/. Please let us know if there is anything else that you would like to see installed on any of the CSAR systems.

Modules

Software access on the CSAR machines is controlled by modules. Loading a given module sets the paths and environment necessary to use the software associated with it. A number of the more important modules are loaded automatically on login (use the module list command to see which). The more useful module commands are listed below. A complete list can be seen via the module help command.

Further information on modules is available at www.csar.cfs.ac.uk/user_information/software/modules.shtml