Intel intros HPC developer tools

Intel is shipping five new software development tools that promise developers of supercomputing and distributed high performance computing (HPC) software environments to accelerate and simplify the creations of applications. As a result the new "Cluster Tools" help to reduce the costs of software development. The new products include Trace Analyzer and Collector 6.0, Message Passing Interface (MPI) Library 2.0, Math Kernel Library (MKL) Cluster Edition 8.0, Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP) 5.0 and VTune Performance Analyzer for Linux 8.0. Intel said that all components can be used in conjunction with other popular software development tools.

Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector 6.0 captures and displays MPI traffic to identify the communications bottlenecks within the cluster. The new version comes with an improved data presentation and scalability for large clusters, according to the company. MKL is a set of optimized, thread-safe, mathematical functions for engineering, scientific and financial applications requiring high performance. The MPI Library 2.0 enables deployment flexibility by allowing applications to run on multiple network architectures without changing code, Intel said.

IPP 5.0 focuses on multi-core and HPC platforms by offering "thread-safe" functions including optimized encryption, string handling and multimedia functions. The VTune Performance Analyzer 8.0 for Linux allows developers to improve software performance by finding bottlenecks through advanced profiling technologies which is critical with multi-core systems and HPC environments.

Pricing for the tools ranges from $200 (IPP 5.0) through $500 (Trace Analyzer and Collector 6.0, MKL, MPI Library 2.0) up to $700 for the VTune Performance Analyzer for Linux.