netCDF operators NCO version 3.0.1 are ready

• To: NCO Announce Mail List <nco-announce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
• Subject: netCDF operators NCO version 3.0.1 are ready
• From: Charlie Zender <zender@xxxxxxx>
• Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 11:34:33 -0700

The netCDF operators NCO version 3.0.1 are ready.

http://nco.sf.net (Homepage)
http://dust.ess.uci.edu/nco (Homepage "mirror")

Version 3.0.1 contains mainly build and benchmarking improvements.
The only user-visible change is one more tweak to the default ncks
printing behavior. There is an important bug-fix for ncap so
ncap users should upgrade.
Threading is much improved and has been enabled on all arithmetic
operators. Users with SMP machines and OpenMP compilers who want
faster processing should upgrade too.

1. ncks printing behavior:
   ncks in.nc : Prints all data and metadata
   ncks -M in.nc : Prints only global metadata
   ncks -m in.nc : Prints only variable metadata
   ncks -H in.nc : Prints only variable data
   See http://nco.sf.net/nco.html#ncks for details.

2. Benchmarks (Harry Mangalam): nco/bm/nco_bm.pl benchmarks NCO.
   It also runs the regression tests. Running nco_bm.pl, e.g., with

   nco_bm.pl --bench --udpreport
   nco_bm.pl --regress --udpreport

   exercises NCO and sends the timing reports and your credit card
   infomation back to NCO central. Remove --udpreport if worried.

3. ncap exponentiation (Henry Butowsky): Versions < 3.0.1 incorrectly
   handle exponentiation of a variable to a variable power
   (V^V). We recommend that all ncap users upgrade.

4. All operators except ncap are now memory pure.
   No uninitialized memory is referenced, and no unfree'd or "still
   reachable" memory exists at operator exit, according to valgrind.
   Actually, system libraries and libnetcdf.a have minor memory
   transgressions. The point is that NCO causes no memory leaks.

5. Threading: ncwa is now threaded by default, with potentially
   large performance benefits. Many more operators have threading
   enabled with smaller benefits. Next version we will try to remove
   remaining critical regions for increased performance.

Future: We anticipate one more stability-oriented release (3.0.2),
followed by the MPI-enabled NCO (3.1).

Enjoy,
Charlie
--
Charlie Zender, surname@xxxxxxx, Department of Earth System Science
University of California, Irvine CA 92697-3100. Tel: (949) 824-2987