[nmag-announce] Nmag 0.2 released
Fangohr H.
we have released Nmag 0.2.1 (0.2 was out some weeks ago but we didn't
announce it; then fixed a few bugs and put 0.2.1 online). We have also
updated the virtual machine (vmware) image which now provides the latest Nmag 0.2.1.
I would like to use this opportunity to thank Matteo Franchin for his
work on Nmag during the past three years -- he has been the person
improving the code and providing most of the user support, and is now
moving on to a different role.
With best wishes,
Hans
Changelog, Release 0.2.1 (13 January 2012)
Bugfixes/Improvements
* Patch from U.Nitzsche (ifw-dresden.de), allowing from-source installation in /opt
* Fix for MPI regression test
* Minor improvements for documentation (dispersion relation computation and anisotropy examples in manual)
* Correction for instructions to run tests in nmag-core install.
* Adding python-pyvtk to list of required packages in installation instructions.
Release 0.2.0 December 2011
New Features
* Improved handling of command line arguments. The parsing of command line arguments now happens at the beginning, before the nmag module is imported. Options can be passed to PETSc using the --petsc-opts flag (try nsim -h --petsc-opts -h to get a list). It is then possible to use the logging facilities offered by the library. The interactive command nsim_i has been removed. Nsim detects when it is being used interactively and uses IPython when possible.
* Added a new command Nmagprobe for postprocessing the data. Can probe the magnetisation in a cubic lattice in space and time. Can convert the data into one or more OOMMF OVF files (both versions 1.0 and 2.0 are supported) and these files can be reloaded with OOMMF, for example. Can Fourier transform the data (in space, time or both) to obtain dispersion curves or the modes of the system.
* Partial PBC support for HLib. HLib can now be used together with PBC. Downside: the size of the HLib matrix increases with the number of copies. For a sufficiently large number of copies (typically 1000 or more), using PBC+HLib may not give any benefits with respect to PBC alone.
* Major restructuring of the installation procedure. In addition to the installation from a large tarball as in the previous release, it is now possible to install Nmag using the system's Python and other libraries (assuming the versions are compatible). This has been tested for Ubuntu 11.10 and 11.04.
Bugfixes/Improvements
* Adjusted flags in compilation Makefile. PETSc compiled --with-debugging=no (~10 % speed improvement). The compilation also stops when HLib compilation fails.
* Optimisation of mesh module: topology information generated only on demand, mesh datastructures re-engineered to occupy less memory. As a consequence a medium-large simulation requires less memory (reduction of 10-20 % of the non-BEM part) and is faster in the initialisation phase (about the same amount).
* Added a bug report script to collect compilation logs into a single file. That should considerably simplify the submission of bug reports.
* Updated packages in the compile from source. We are now using: Mpich2 1.2.1p1, Petsc 3.1-p5, Ocaml 3.12.0, Findlib 1.2.1, Gsl 1.14, Parmetis 3.1.1, NumPy 1.5
* Added support for Numpy array to pass data to the core simulation engine (makes it faster to set and retrieve fields)
* Fixed bug when reloading data from an MPI simulation with different number of nodes with respect to the one which saved the data (data is now reordered when loading it, if necessary)
* Reworked build system. All Nmag OCaml sources are now in one single directory which makes it easy to configure and build the nsim executable.
* Rewrote the test system and fixed bugs.
* Ported the documentation to Sphinx (thank you Max Albert)
* Added examples to guided tour, and extended FAQ.
----
Hans Fangohr
Engineering and the Environment
University of Southampton
Phone: +44 (0) 238059 8345
Email: fan...@soton.ac.uk
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~fangohr