SST 11.0.0 Has been released

[allevin]

SST 11.0.0 Released

SST v11.0.0 is now available and can be downloaded here

The SST 11.0.0 release contains several changes to the simulation core and its component/sub-component APIs. In addition, a number of performance and stability issues have been addressed allowing for reduced simulation times and better scalability.

A selection of the improvement highlights are:

General:

• SST v11.0.0 includes a number of bug fixes, performance improvements, and feature updates
• Completed integration of new testing framework
• To enable future improvements in parsing, configuring, and error checking, SST Core is introducing naming conventions for various items that require names. In general, names must now be legal Python variables. These conventions are encouraged in SST v11.0.0 and will be enforced in SST 12.0.0. Warnings will be introduced throughout the SST 11.x releases relating to these conventions. A detailed description of the new naming conventions can be found here.

SST-Core (PDES-Core):

• Updates to statistics API, including ability to create statistics objects in Python
• UnitAlgebra is available in Python
• New global parameter objects can be shared across components, reducing configuration memory footprint
• Various optimizations to improve performance and reduce memory footprint for pre-simulation configuration (e.g., confg graph generation)
• New memory interface (StandardMem) with accelerator/MMIO support and ability to handle custom memory events. This interface is currently experimental and is expected to mature by SST 12 and may ultimately replace SimpleMem.
• Replaced SharedRegions with SharedObjects that include implementations for shared arrays, sets, and maps.
• SharedRegion is deprecated
• Per the naming convention noted above in the General updates, find_prefix_params() is replaced with get_scoped_params() which assumes a '.' separator between the scope and the parameter name
• Continued work to separate public and private APIs in the core. Moved previously-deprecated public functions to core-internal classes. Removed core-internal classes from the installed header files. Marked additional public functions deprecated to prepare for removal in the next major release (SST 12).
• Established new sst-core test suite
• Added const version of getDefaultTimeBase() and related time converter functions
• Added function to let subcomponents query their parent component's name
• Updated Python APIs with Python 3.9 support
• SimpleMem interface added support for querying cache line size from memory system
• Serializers added for std::unordered_map and std::unordered_set
• Added help documentation for the use of '--' as an alternative to '--model-options' for separating sst and configuration script arguments
• Added verbosity flag to dot output option
• Improved error handling in main simulation loop
• Fixed issue where wrong simulated time was reported in parallel simulations with unconnected ranks (i.e., no link crossing ranks)
• Fixed issue where 'sst -h' and 'sst -V' incorrectly returned a non-zero exit code
• Fixed issue in Link where setting a callback handler on a polling link did not generate an error
• Fixed issue where connecting two links to the same port did not generate an error

SST-Elements:

• A new generic pipeline processor core model, Vanadis, has been released
• The deprecated Scheduler element has been removed
• New Ember Python module
• Improved Merlin Python module
• Replaced SimpleElementExample with a better set of examples and improved documentation
• DRAMSim3 backend added to memHierarchy
• Balar moved into sst-elements to simplify configuration
• Moved all sst-elements testing to use sst-test-elements infrastructure
• Ember and Firefly bug fixes and enhancements
• Migrated Merlin and Ember python modules to use new global params feature
• Improved Merlin/Ember issues leading to long build times for large graphs
• Added congestion management support in Merlin
• Added ability to simulate failed links in Merlin
• Fixed issue in Ariel where a zombie child process was sometimes left behind
• Fixed bug in memHierarchy where the noninclusive directory coherence protocol did not correctly load a replacement policy

SST-Macro:

• Improvements and bug fixes for source-to-source compiler
• Additions and improvements to skeleton applications
• Improvements and bug fixes for network models

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If you have questions on this release announcement, please refer to SST Support.

Current release information can be found here

We look forward to hearing your successes with the latest release!

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SST Research and Product Teams

Sandia National Laboratories, USA