TY - GEN
T1 - The design of a portable scientific tool
T2 - 1996 ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing, SC 1996
AU - Gallo, Steven M.
AU - Miller, Russ
AU - Weeks, Charles M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 1996 IEEE.
PY - 1996
Y1 - 1996
N2 - Developing and maintaining a large software package is a complex task. Decisions are made early in the design process that affect i) the ability of a user to effectively exploit the package and ii) the ability of a software engineer to maintain it. This case study discusses issues in software development and maintainability of a scientific packcage called SnB1, which is used to determine molecular crystal structures. The design of the user interface is discussed along with software engineering concepts, including modular programming, data encapsulation, and internal code documentation. Issues concerning the integration of Fortran, a language that is still widely used in the scientific comm unity into a modern scientifie application with a C-based user interface are also discussed. Scientific applications benefit from being available on a wide variety of platforms. Due to the demand, SnB is available on a variety of sequential and parallel platforms. Methods used in the design of SnB for such portability are presented, including POSIX compliance, automatic configuration scripts, and parallel programming techniques.
AB - Developing and maintaining a large software package is a complex task. Decisions are made early in the design process that affect i) the ability of a user to effectively exploit the package and ii) the ability of a software engineer to maintain it. This case study discusses issues in software development and maintainability of a scientific packcage called SnB1, which is used to determine molecular crystal structures. The design of the user interface is discussed along with software engineering concepts, including modular programming, data encapsulation, and internal code documentation. Issues concerning the integration of Fortran, a language that is still widely used in the scientific comm unity into a modern scientifie application with a C-based user interface are also discussed. Scientific applications benefit from being available on a wide variety of platforms. Due to the demand, SnB is available on a variety of sequential and parallel platforms. Methods used in the design of SnB for such portability are presented, including POSIX compliance, automatic configuration scripts, and parallel programming techniques.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84880999816
U2 - 10.1109/SUPERC.1996.183511
DO - 10.1109/SUPERC.1996.183511
M3 - Conference contribution
T3 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Supercomputing
BT - Proceedings of the 1996 ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing, SC 1996
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 17 November 1996 through 22 November 1996
ER -