Two ALPACA tools displayed at SC08

At the recent 2008 Supercomputing conference in Austin, the LSU Center for Computation and Technology booth provided a showcase for two new remote debugging tools currently developed as part of the ALPACA project: VisitConnect and HTTPS.

VisitConnect is a module that provides running Cactus simulations with the capability to expose their mesh and data structures to the visualization package VisIt. Leveraging on VisIt’s functionalities, the module allows for remote visualization and simulation control through pause, restart and single-step commands.

HTTPS implements simulation control through HTTP access to the simulation host. The controls allow a simulation to be paused and examined at the level of a single function call. It can be used, for instance, to determine which function causes simulation to crash, or to check if the actual order of functions execution is correct. It is a good starting point for different interesting visualization and debugging functionalities.

16 Dec 2008 — bentivegna