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Further reading

Overview
1984
JanuaryMarchMayJulySeptemberNovember
1985
JanuaryMarchMayJulySeptemberNovember
1986
JanuaryMarchMayJulySeptemberNovember
1987
JanuaryMarchMayJulySeptemberNovember
1988
JanuaryMarchMayJulySeptemberNovember
Index of issues
Index

May/June 1988

Editorial

A bumper issue of Forum this time reflecting the large amount of activity since our last issue. The IBM 3090 was installed very rapidly with little inconvenience to users, thanks to the careful planning and skilled work of the RAL and IBM staff. Its arrival is good news for the IBM user community as it keeps us in the mainstream of IBM development.

The article by Peter Kemp, Chairman of the National Centres Common User Interface Working Party, was written for publication by ULCC and UMRCC as well as in Forum. It was prompted by user comments that there is little in it for them. Peter points out the long term goals. The article may seem very pessimistic to those expecting short-term change. I would add that more discussion has taken place between the staff of the three centres in the last twelve months than in the previous twelve years. The will to bring about change is there and I am confident that we shall make progress. We would love to hear your views on the article.

Paul Jeffreys article "A Life in the Day of . . ." is just the sort of thinking we need as input to our planning for the future of central services. If you think that users in your scientific discipline will require something radically different from the world envisaged by Paul, put pen to paper and let us have an article for the next issue.

On the VAX front we have secured extra effort this year for the support of graphics. The V AX User Group has been considering how best to use this effort. I hope this discussion will continue and broaden so that we are sure that we are deploying limited resources to the maximum effect.

It seems Summer has come and the users have flown! The workload on the central mainframes is low and now is the time to submit bulk production work if you have it. The corning of the 3090 has reduced the unit cost of computing and a free bonus allocation later in the year is likely. So fear not about your ration. get your jobs in now.

Paul Thompson, Head of User Support and Marketing, Central Computing Department

Joint Study Agreement Press Release

As we go to press an announcement is imminent of SERC/RAL participation in IBM's European Supercomputing Initiative. This could have a major beneficial effect on our IBM Facilities and Services.

The programme, announced by IBM in 1987. aims to develop partnerships between IBM and academic institutions specialising in Numerically Intensive Computing Techniques.

This initiative has been running in the USA for some time. Cornell University, the US participant, has been equipped with a 3090-600E with six Vector Facilities.

CNUSC in Montpelier is the first European participant. Others are expected to be announced.

This could be a major new development at RAL and we hope to bring you more details in our next issue.

Paul Thompson - Head of User Support & Marketing, Central Computing Department

Out with the Old, In with the New

As users of the RAL central mainframe service will be aware, the period at the end of March and the beginning of April was intensely busy. Once approval to replace the existing machines had been received the whole programme took place quite quickly.

Technical evaluation of the replies to the invitation to tender led us to choose an IBM 3090 and an order was placed. The contract comprised an IBM 3090-200E, 40 gigabytes of disks, and two 3480 cartridge tape drives. The 3090 is a two processor machine of about the same power as the 3081 and Atlas 10 combined. It has 64 MB of main storage and 128 MB of expanded storage, secondary storage used for paging. It also incorporates one Vector Facility which, although less powerful than the CRAY, will be a very useful adjunct to our facilities. The hardware ordered was designed to replace the Atlas 10 and 3081 processors and some of our older disk units, the net gain in disk space amounting to 23 GB.

The new equipment arrived on Friday 25 March and the disks were installed the following day. The Atlas 10 was disconnected on Monday 28 March and the 3090 installed. After software installation and operator training the 3090 took over from the 3081 on the evening of Wednesday 6 April.

As with the installation of any new system there were some initial problems. An intermittent terminal hang problem was fixed by the installation of CP Rel 4 on Sunday 17 April. Systems staff are still tuning the new system and we are expecting improvements in performance.

To enable the operating system to make use of the expanded storage on the 3090 we are running a different version of the VM Operating System known as VM/XA SF. Under this we are running the VM/HPO and MVS systems exactly as they were run on the 3081 and Atlas 10. Clearly this extra level of VM introduces extra overheads and thus reduces performance. This is a temporary situation. Long term we aim to migrate to the most recent of IBM's VM operating systems VM/XA SP. Under this we shall run CMS and MVS.

In case you are now totally confused here is a diagram of our current system software.

VM/XA SF VM/HPO MVS C M S ..... C M S C M S

Current System Software

I mentioned above that the 3090 includes a Vector Facility. We have not yet introduced this into general service but if you are interested in making trial use of it then please contact John Gordon (JCG @ RL.IB). More news of the Vector Facility will appear in future issues of FORUM.

The 3090 is in the vanguard of IBM's development and is easily expandable to incorporate up to six processors and the same number of Vector Facilities together with a very large amount of storage. Taken together with the CRAY X/MP-48 it makes the Atlas Centre one of true excellence for academic computing.

Paul Thompson - Head of User Support & Marketing, Central Computing Department

VAX User Group Meeting

The seventeenth meeting of the SERC VAX/VMS Users Group was hosted by Digital Equipment Co. Ltd. at their DEC Park U.K. headquarters on Tuesday, the fifth of April. Despite the clash of this date with many university Easter holidays, there was an attendance of around twenty five.

An afternoon agenda of presentations from our DEC hosts left us a tight schedule in the morning for conducting VUG business. After routine reports from Sue Weston and Mike Waters on networking status and the recent VVNUG meeting respectively, the main agenda topics were RAL VAX support and VAX security.

The group learnt that permission has now been given to the RAL graphics group to recruit a support programmer for VAX graphics, though the possibility of an extra person in Paul Bryant's VAX support group, raised at the previous VUG Open Meeting, has not materialised. This led the meeting into a vigorous discussion of relative support priorities, which was the real order of the day. However, although a list was drawn up of useful support areas, it proved difficult to decide how to rank the list in priority order. Part of the problem was of course that members had different priorities between themselves, and a question was even raised concerning the fairness of representation from different research communities.

Eventually it was realised that we would have to carry this discussion over into the next VUG meeting in July. Meanwhile VUG members learned a little more about the processes by which support manpower is funded and allocated, and the routes through which these processes might be influenced. Of particular importance, now that the Computer User Liaison Committee has been disbanded, is the direct participation in the VAX, VMS User Group of Paul Bryant, head of Communications and Small Systems at RAL, and Paul Thompson, head of User Support and Marketing, each with their regular access to the head of the Central Computing Department. It is therefore important that users' opinions are clearly aired at VUG meetings. It is also important that users apply pressure through their relevant research boards, since this is where the funding decisions originate.

After the lengths, albeit inconclusive, discussion of support there was just a little time to review security issues. Many members had been concerned about a spate of hacking attacks at the beginning of the year. Though actual damage has in the end been minimal, many system managers have had to reluctantly divert effort into security measures. It was agreed that security should be a regular item on the VUG agenda and that the RAL network support team should provide a central reference point for notification of security breaches.

With the morning business over, and a DEC lunch inside them, VUG members then settled down to a series of presentations from DEC specialists. We were told the latest about LAVC (Local Area VAX Clustering) as well as the DEC distributed computing alternatives to LAVC. We were then given an overview of DEC workstation products, as a prelude to the main entertainment of the afternoon - a demonstration of DEC's new state-of-the-art graphics workstation, the VAXstation 8000, and a tour of an enviable configuration comprising most of the current VAX range.

Bob Cranfield, UCL, HEP VAX User Group Chairman
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