SST V6.0.0 Release Notes
The changes in v6.0.0 of the Structure Simulation Toolkit (SST) are divided into three areas: general, PDES-core and integrated elements.
General:
- SST v6.0.0 includes numerous fixes to issues in the core which address end-user feedback and significantly improve performance for some simulations
- SST Core and Elements are now separate downloads and build independently, with per-installation configuration abilities.
- SST project now hosted on GitHub
Core:
- SST Core is an independent application built separately from the elements
- SST Core uses new custom serialization for improved performance (no longer based on Boost serialzation)
- SST Core adds support for C++11 threading allowing parallel simulations to use MPI and on-node threading
- SST Core random number generations are enhanced to improve performance
- Fixes to SST Core statistics handling to improve performance
- Additional support for querying SST configuration in the Python interface
Elements:
- SST Elements is separately built from the SST-Core
- Thornhill element added which will allow for multi-fidelity on-node simulations to be created
- SST-Macro now uses SST-Core for parallel discrete event simulation
- Merlin now supports adaptive routing
- Enhanced DragonFly configuration options for Merlin
- Additional motifs added to Ember to broaden communication pattern modeling in more dynamic cases
- Memory allocation support added to FireFly to improve memory bandwidth modeling
- MemHierarchy includes supports for improved cache modeling including cache-banking
- Memory Controllers now support SubComponent options for request re-ordering
- Ariel supports statistical gathering for application instructions, memory allocations and calls to free
- Fixes in Cassini to reduce memory requirements for prefetching tables
Known Issues:
- Ember element in SST-Elements has rare operation timeout failure 274
Operating System / Compiler Combinations:
Release V6.0.0 (core and elements) has been built and tested with the following OS/compiler combinations.
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (64-bit) with GCC v4.8.2
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (64-bit) with GCC v5.1.0
- Mac OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) with XCode 7.2 (LLVM)
- Mac OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) with XCode 7.3 (LLVM)
- CentOS 6 with GCC 4.8.2 (via RedHat Developer Toolkit V2)
- CentOS 7 with GCC 4.8.2
- TOSS 2 with GNU 4.8.2 (via RedHat Developer Toolkit V2)
- SNL CoE RedHat 6 with GCC 4.8.2 (via RedHat Developer Toolkit V2)
- SNL CoE RedHat 7 with GCC 4.8.2
External Components:
External components and the compatible version numbers are listed below. Other versions may work, but these have been tested with this release.
- Required
- Boost 1.56.0 or greater
- Python 2.6 or greater (note Python 3.0 or onwards is not compatible)
- Recommended
- Optional
- DRAMSim2 2.2.2
- NVDimmSim 2.0.0
- HybridSim 2.0.1
- QEMU 0.12.3
- QSim 0.2.1
- Zoltan 3.8
- GLPK 4.54 (For Scheduler Component)
- METIS 5.1 (For Scheduler Component)
- Intel Pin Tool 2.14-71313
Elements not in release:
Although available from the devel branch, the following elements are not provided in this release:
Fixed Issues
- 5 Trac: #383 SST generates boost serialization warnings
- 8 Trac: #202 Provide nightly tarballs
- 9 Trac: #275 Upon successful nightly build TITLE test, publish make dist tarball and svn rev num
- 11 Trac: #400 Configure check for PIN should abort if too old of a version is found
- 22 Trac: #454 Statistics SimTime does not match serial to parallel
- 23 Trac: #466 configure creates incorrect config when pin is found in the shell environment but not on the command line
- 24 Trac: #467 configure of boost threads fails on sst-devel
- 25 Trac: #456 configure doesnt check for zlib.h
- 28 Statistics API bug: Values shown in histogram bin labels can overflow.
- 30 Marsaglia does not use enough random data for 64bit results
- 35 SST Core Static Build allows Elements to be Bound in during Link
- 37 Implement SharedRegion::merge(uint8_t *target, const uint8_t *newData, size_t size)
- 38 SharedRegionMerger::merge() with change sets does not detect conflicts
- 41 Ariel destructor is not being invoked on termination
- 50 StopAction is not thread safe
- 51 Rarely encounter code in core known to NOT be thread safe
- 52 Add guaranteed event delivery order
- 61 SST Statistics should shut down after components
- 63 The pymodel infrastructure does not have a way to get number of threads
- 64 sstinfo should be able to search for subcomponents
- 67 NotSerializable macro needs namespace for SST::Output
- 76 boost -mt lib support dissappeared
- 77 –enable-debug missing
- 78 sst-info does not work after external core/elements split
- 80 Doxygen build does not work on external core
- 83 sst-info broken in new split-core
- 86 OpenMPI leaves many residual directories in /tmp
- 94 OpenMPI MacPorts Install isn’t in Documentation
- 100 SST Python Scripts need mechanism to set thread count
- 103 Migrate SST::Interprocess away from Boost
- 110 Statistics broken (componentregisterstat_impl.h was commented out)
- 112 .gitignore contains “sst” - prevents easy addition of new files to repository.
- 113 mpicxx/mpic++
- 123 Python API extension: getComponentByName()
- 126 SST Core does not call Component Destructors
- 130 configure –with-zoltan is successful even if zoltan is not found
- 133 Email address in ./configure is out of date for SST-Core
- 11 parameter checking (regex enabled) is broken
- 12 cpu-affinity should be disabled on OSX
- 26 Pulling data from .git/refs/heads broken
- 4 Trac: #85 For mcopterian the result on MacOS is not deterministic
- 18 Trac: #299 MH: L2/L3+ should go to sleep when idle
- 21 Trac: #313 support for stopAtWalltime
- 23 Trac: #347 Zero queue fill in Ariel on forking children
- 26 Trac: #363 Nightly testing has four Test Suites that still use xml input files.
- 29 Trac: #374 Cache MSHR occupancy rate statistic
- 31 Trac: #396 Seed handling in trafficgen
- 38 Trac: #425 Problem in UniformDist (trafficgen)
- 41 Trac: #443 CHDL component is not ready for release.
- 42 Trac: #455 femlm makefile is broken
- 48 Ariel does not allow out of source builds because of fesimple.cc
- 62 Typo in ember test file
- 64 Merlin Dragonfly Question
- 65 Miranda SPMVGenerator Missing Parameter
- 73 Prospero PIN Tool Test Fails because of GLIBC 32-bit Library Issue
- 76 McOpteron Does Not Have Reproducible Results
- 77 SST McNiagara Component Fails for N>1 in Threaded PDES Core
- 78 SST SimpleDistribComponent Has Inconsistent Output on Threaded PDES Core
- 79 SST Miranda Random Gen Goes to Time Limit in Threaded PDES Test
- 80 MemSieve has Inconsistent Output with Threaded PDES Core
- 81 SST SimpleComponent Has Extra Line in Output when Using Threaded PDES Core N=2
- 90 ariel_enable Auto-Mode lets Requests Through
- 91 Simulated Time increases when using Ariel if SST Goes Faster
- 92 MemSieve Miss and Hit Rates are Incorrect when Running STREAM Benchmark
- 93 Ariel Seg-Faults when using SNAP with PIN_InitSymbols I_FUNC_SYMBOLS
- 94 Boost Releases > 1.56 do not work with SST. Need demo case.
- 95 Three identified problems with gcc-5.3.1 vs. SST
- 101 Need more flexible dragonfly models
- 103 Full Call Stack Profiling in Ariel
- 107 gcc-5.3.1 yields excessive warning messages on Ubuntu 16.04
- 112 MemH caches should support banking
- 116 Element name in miranda starts with uppercase M
- 117 MemH: memory controller should give better error output if mmap fails
- 121 10 tests fail only on Ubuntu 16.04
- 129 McOpteron test2 current fails on Linux as well as MacOS
- 130 Patterns does work with Threaded PDS (n>1)
- 131 SST_McOpteron component does not work with Threaded PDES cores
- 132 “fail to mmap” is causing 6 test failures on Ubuntu 14.04 multithread.
- 137 SST McNiagara Model Needs to be Removed from Devel Branch
- 139 Ember SIRIUS May Fatal if MPI_REQUEST_NULL is Found in MPI Trace
- 148 The simpleComponent test is not deterministic for multhread n>1
- 150 The simple Clocker test currently run 60% slower than the Reference Value.
- 151 SST Ariel/PIN Tests are only on sst-test
- 152 SST Patterns should be moved to the Elements Attic
- 153 SST Elements need to be tested with MPI to ensure new Serialization interface works
- 154 SST Macro needs to be built with Core using Jenkins
- 157 Copyright date needs to be updated
- 162 9 tests fail when “mpirun -np 2” is applied to entire collection of 200+ tests
- 187 sst.sandia.gov subpages point to old unused urls
- 212 MemH - Limit Total Prefetches by Number of MSHR Entries Occupied
- 213 MemH - Drop Prefetches from Lower Level Caches Under Pressure or if in Flight
- 214 MemH - Needs a SubComponent for Request Reordering
- 215 MemH - Integrate Request Limiter Directly into MemController
- 216 MemH - Needs SimpleMoreComplicatedMemBackEnd
- 218 Reorganize Ariel/Makefile.am PIN Compilation
- 225 Miranda RandomGenerator is not Seed-Able
- 243 Motif: AllPingPong
- 244 Motif: Alltoall hanging
- 245 External Core/Elements Testing - Ariel Tests Fail Due to with-pin config
- 246 External Core/Elements Testing - chdl Tests Fail Due to with-chdl config
- 247 External Core/Elements Testing - Scheduler Tests Fail Due to with-glpk & with-metis config
- 248 Descrepancy using prefetcher between single thread and multi thread
- 249 merlin networkGen asks for torus:width when building mesh
- 250 pymerlin does not support unconnected endpoints
- 251 Merlin segfaults during init with unconnected ports
- 269 Motif: Halo3D26 Seg Fault in Firefly
- 293 AMR motif in ember reporting to convert block files to binary using ssh-meshconvert
- 302 .ignore feature on autogen.sh is missing
- 304 Out of source build does not work
- 311 sst-elements configuration defaults to –disable-silent-rules enabled
- 312 sst-elements configuration no longer displays summary configuration information
- 315 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling VaultSim
- 316 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling cacheTracer
- 317 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling chdlComponent
- 318 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling ember
- 319 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling miranda
- 320 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling prospero
- 321 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling savannah
- 322 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling scheduler
- 323 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling sst_mcopteron
- 324 Deprecated warnings on parameters when compiling zodiac
- 329 Make dist behavior with the new autotools file is unacceptable
- 342 Firefly.nic gives a FATAL when running Ember
- 353 configure in sst-elements 6.0.x (basename problem – minor)
- 357 Configuration summary doesn’t show correct result for goblin hmcsim
- 369 Pymerlin.py Gives Segmentation Fault?
- 375 There is a problem with Ariel emergency shutdown code
- 405 PR_SET_PTRACER not checked for in config, fails on certain ariel builds
- 411 Potential Memory Leak in Large Simulations where Prefetching with Cassini is Enabled
SST-SQE
- 96 SQE testing time-limit processor only looks for a single SST invocation.
- 102 DNS for sst-simulator.org needs to be redirected to sstsimulator.github.io
- 123 Looping can result fromTest Suite using nested python files, without return code processing
- 129 Nightly Status Email Bug with Failed Builds
- 130 Nightly build on Ubuntu 16.04 fails due to module initialization issue.
- 145 Linux utilitiy, patch, is not available on COE RHEL 7 VM
- 164 memHSieve test fails with no useful output with mpirun
- 247 The memHSieve testSuite test for Ariel is not valid
- 276 Static Build have not been updated since the core/element split
- 297 An error in the memHSieve test on MacOS sometimes takes out Jenkins Agent
- 302 The Ariel test Suite fails except on sst-test, because of faulty testing input.
- 318 Daily Report Summary has an Name Error on Mac Builds
