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- INTRODUCTION:
-
- Welcome to DINO. This file will (hopefully) serve as enough of an
- introduction to DINO to get you started. You may already have an
- installed copy of DINO; if that is true for you, you can skip the
- INSTALLATION section.
-
- Please bear with us, this is educational software. That means
- that there will probably be bugs in the compiler. Feel free to
- contact us with any questions or bug reports. Your feedback is
- essential if we are to really be able to correct problems in the
- compiler.
-
-
- WHAT IS DINO:
-
- DINO is a language for programming numerical applications on
- distributed memory parallel machines. DINO provides the user with a
- high level paradigm consisting of a virtual machine, a simple method
- for distributing regular data structures across that machine, a simple
- parallel execution model, and high level communication primitives.
- This first version of DINO only supports single limited sized virtual
- machines and regular data. Future versions should be much broader in
- scope. This version will run on the Intel hypercubes, their simulators,
- and a network of sun work stations (using PVM, which you must obtain
- separately).
-
- More information about DINO generally can be found in the DINO Users
- Manual, described below, or in the September 1991 issue of the Journal
- of Parallel and Distributed Computing.
-
-
- DOCUMENTATION:
-
- There is an extensive DINO user's manual in the doc directory. It
- is in LaTeX format. To produce a "dvi" file, type "make" in that
- directory, then use your local output program (e.g., dvips) to print
- it. It is about 125 pages, so be patient. The manual contains an
- informal introduction to DINO, a formal description of the language,
- many examples, a section on how to set up your defaults to use DINO,
- and a section on installing DINO.
-
-
-
- INSTALLATION NOTES:
-
- Most of the manual section on installing DINO is obsolete.
- There is now an Automated Installation Tool included with the DINO
- distribution. Just make sure that you are in the top level directory
- of DINO (this directory) and type "install". The Automated Installer
- will ask you (a large number of) questions, and then do the installation.
-
- The "install" program referred to above is one that comes with
- DINO. If your path does not have a "." at the beginning, it may
- be necessary for you to type "./install" to invoke the DINO install
- program instead of the standard unix "install".
-
- The Automated Installer just does a plain vanilla installation
- (for a large number of machine combinations and types). If you want
- to take advantage of DINO's fancier options (for installation), you
- will have to do so manually. We suggest that you use the Automated
- Installer to set up the initial installation and then modify it by
- hand. However, if you want to install DINO from scratch, the details
- in the Installation Section of the Manual on how all the configuration
- files work are still correct. That Section should also be consulted
- if you wish to modify the automatic installation.
-
- The Automated Installer can also be used to update DINO if you
- have a newer tape. Just proceed as if you were doing an initial
- installation. The Automated Installer should not modify any of your
- configuration files.
-
- You will have to provide the automated installer with a fair
- amount of information for it to work correctly, such as names of
- directories where you want DINO installed on any remote parallel
- machines, etc. The one thing that you should prepare in advance is
- that DINO can only install the back end(s) of the compiler (the part
- that runs on the parallel machine) if there is a login on that machine
- which has write access to the necessary directories and that trusts
- the user doing the installation on the sun (the permissions in the
- ".rhosts" file are correct). If this is not the case, you will have
- to do part of the installation manually.
-
- If you have an iPSC2 that has files cross-mounted with nfs, DINO
- can take advantage of this fact in two situations: (1) If user's home
- directories are cross-mounted, DINO will not have to copy intermediate
- programs to the cube; (2) if the installation directory for DINO is
- cross-mounted, DINO will not have to copy the back-end part of the
- compiler over to the cube. The DINO installation program will ask
- about these situations.
-
-
- USER NOTES:
-
- To make use of DINO, you must have an "ARCHTYPE" environment
- variable defined (using the standard sun convention) and you have to
- make an addition to your path. This is more complicated than it might
- seem, because you have to do the same thing on every remote parallel
- machine you are using as well. See the DINO user's manual for
- information on this.
-
- There is an include file with the predefined mapping functions in
- it. To use this file, put:
-
- #include "dino.h"
-
- at the top of your program. Then you invoke the DINO compiler with:
-
- dino <filename>
-
- Typing "dino -help" gives you a list of all the dino options. These
- are explained in the DINO user's manual.
-
- There are at least a dozen known compiler bugs. a list of these
- can be found in the DINO user's manual. There are probably more than
- a dozen unknown compiler bugs. These can be found by using DINO.
- Please share any bugs with us, in addition to letting us know what you
- like and don't like about DINO. We can be reached by email at
- "dino@cs.colorado.edu".
-
- Betty
- Bob
- Matt
- Rich
- Tom
-
- The DINO "compiler lizards"
-
-