IACTalks mobile version
A year ago we published the
IACTalks website,
a video archive of the webcast seminars at the IAC. IACTalks is an Adobe
Flash-based application, so it doesn't works in some iOS computers and most
mobile devices. Thus we have developed
IACTalks
Mobile, an independent mobile-aware version based on HTML5 and CSS3 with
a responsive design, which achieves a very high degree of usability in touch
devices and small screens. IACTalks Mobile is a simplified version of its
big brother and is an early beta version so far. That means that it works
in most modern smartphones and tablets including Apple's, though not all,
and some issues or small inconsistencies may surface. We'll appreciate
your feedback about your user experience, as well as suggestions about how
to improve it. Now that you know, get mobile!
Installation of Python 3
Python3 (specifically, version 3.3.2) is now available in all desktop PCs
at the IAC and in the CCA. To launch it, just type python3 or ipython3. It
comes with a limited selection of the most widely used packages, such as
numpy, scipy, or matplotlib. Python 2.7 is still the default version, as
some python packages for astrophysics (for instance the stsci_python suite)
are not compatible with python 3 yet. As usual, questions or problems about
usage of python 3, as well as requests for installation of additional packages,
should be addressed to our CAU helpdesk.
Condor/LaPalma Hall of Fame
Statistsics about the usage of Condor and the LaPalma supercomputer for
the first semester of 2013 have been published. Condor usage has diminished
with respect to 2012: in this period (January-June 2013) Condor has used
up about 320000 CPU hours, which corresponds to an average occupation of
73 CPUs over a total of about 620 CPUs available. For details visit the
SIE
forum post.
Local usage at the LaPalma supercomputer (that is by IAC users who applied
through our allocation committee) has been of 587113 CPU hours in the period
November 2012-February 2013, and of 1479364 CPU hours in the period March-June
2013 (the LaPalma supercomputer was upgraded at the end of 2012). Breakdown
of usage can be found in the
SIE
forum post
Usage statistics for Intel compilers
Since last April we have been collecting usage statistics for the Intel
and PGI compilers, as well as for the NAG library. It turns out that the
Intel Fortran compiler is the most popular one, as shown in the plot below,
which depicts the number of times it has been run in a given day to compile
some code (once the code is compiled, no license is required to run it).
About 40 different users have used the Intel compiler in the period April-Septemebr
2013. We would like to remind you that also the PGI C/C++ and Fortran compilers
are available, and, depending on your specific code, they may produce faster
executables than the Intel (or GNU) compilers. For detailed info on the PGI
compilers, see
http://www.pgroup.com/products/pgiworkstation.htm Furthermore,
we also have floating licenses for several variants of the NAG C and Fortran
libraries for Linux, as listed in
https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/SINFIN/Software_pages/Nag_soft.php.
Get in touch with us if you are not sure about which specific implementation
you need.
Intel compiler usage in the period April-September 2013.
Blue: Fortran compiler - Red: C/C++ compiler. Gray stripes mark weekends.
Upgrade of Web Servers underway
A few weeks ago two new web servers have been installed, to replace
marta and rialto, which (especially the latter) show signs of being unable
to keep up with the increasing load of websites and applications they are
serving. Just to give you an idea, there are more than 100 project
websites, about 30 conference and workshops websites, 50+ personal websites.
To those, add heavy-duty websites such as IACtalks, Site Testing, Telescopes
and Instrumentation, IAC-STAR and others. The two new servers, carlota (development
server, to replace marta) and vivaldi (production external server, to replace
rialto), are significantly more powerful than their predecessors, and have
the latest versions of OS, Apache, PHP, mysql etc. installed. Migration of
websites is underway, and we hope it will be mostly painless (for users as
well as for us), tough we expect some difficulties in transferring those
websites developed and running with ancient versions of Joomla. More detailed
information will be provided in due time.