Star-P Opens Up

By DE Editors

Interactive Supercomputing (ISC; Waltham, MA) has introduced a new version of its Star-P technical computing software, which integrates software and hardware from a variety of high-performance computing sources. Star-P 2.4 serves as an open software platform that supports popular desktop tools, numerical libraries, and hardware accelerators.

Star-P enables the user to develop algorithms and models on PCs using familiar desktop tools, and run them on parallel servers and clusters without having to re-program the code.

In addition to its existing support for MATLAB, the new version of Star-P will add support for the open source Python programming language and Wolfram Research’s Mathematica desktop environment.

Star-P 2.4 features an enhanced API called Star-P OpenConnect, that lets users plug in numerical libraries and solvers. They can plug in existing serial and parallel libraries, work on them with their preferred desktop tool, and execute the code in task- or data-parallel modes. The Star-P OpenConnect Library API also enables organizations to breathe new life into internally developed serial libraries by automatically parallelizing them.
 
Star-P 2.4’s open architecture enables users to tap the computational power, I/O, and memory of third-party hardware accelerators such as math coprocessors, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and graphics processing units (GPUs). Through the Star-P OpenConnect Library API, compute-intensive algorithms embedded in hardware appear as standard library functions that can be accessed within a desktop application.

Price: $7,995 (to start for a 4-socket server license). For more information, visit interactivesupercomputing.com.

 Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.