[daip] Re: AIPS on DEC systems

[Patrick P. Murphy]

On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 14:50:00 +0200 (MET DST), Kester Smith
   <kester at astro.phys.ethz.ch> said: 


> I'm considering updating our copy of AIPS to the Dec 99 release.  We've
> had a lot of problems here with the floating point errors on our DEC
> machines.

Which AIPS version was that with?

> Have these problems been overcome in the latest release?

With the current level of staffing in the AIPS project (see our home page
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/aips/ for details) we have not been able to devote
sufficient resources to tracking down errors such as these.  On the few
times we succeeded, I believe (based on my own memory) that we found
either legitimate problems with the data (causing overflow, divide by
zero, etc.), or in a few cases, logic errors in specific programs.  These
have of course been fixed.

There are several non-NRAO sites with significant investments in Compaq
Alpha systems (including a recent addition using Alpha Linux and the
Compaq FORTRAN compiler; see our DDT/benchmark page).  While they
sometimes come across problems, my impression is that they are still
managing to get production data processing done.

				- Pat
-- 
  Patrick P. Murphy, Ph.D.            Division Head, Charlottesville Computing
  (804) 296-0372, 296-0236                National Radio Astronomy Observatory
  Home: http://www.goof.com/~pmurphy/   Work: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~pmurphy/
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