[RegCNET] RegCM3 on SGI Altix with Intel Itanium CPUs

[BI XUNQIANG]

Hi, Peng Li:

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Peng Li wrote:

> We were able to build the June 16 version of RegCM3 on X86 and X86_64
> computers with both PGI and Intel compilers.
>
> However, we had some problems on a SGI Altix system. The system is
> equiped with Intel Itantium 2 (IA64) CPUs, SUSE Enterprise Linux
> Server 9 and Intel compilers v.9.  PGI compilers do not support IA64
> for the moment. We built netcdf 3.6.1 and 3.6.2 in /opt/i/netcdf and
> it passed the "make test" step without any errors.

Sounds good, can you send me the netcdf libraries for Intel Itantium 2 
(IA64) CPUs, SUSE Enterprise Linux, so I can include them in the next 
release, thanks !

> We were able to compile terrain by running terrain.x without any errors.
> However, the resulted DOMIAN.INFO was not correct. When plotting the
> data with GrADS, it showed "Contouring: nan to nan interval inf".
>
> Altix is a 64-bit little endian machine. So we kept "-convert
> big_endian" in the Makefile and set ibyte=1 in domain.param. We also
> tried removing  "-convert big_endian" and set ibyte=4 but the results
> were still not right. The datasets we used were GLCC10MIN_BATS.CDF and
> GTOPO30_10MIN.CDF. I am attaching the makefile below.

I think you need use the option "-convert big_endian" for IFC 8, or IFC 9 
( and -byteswapio for PGF), as for DOMIAN.INFO, there is a quick check.

The file size of DOMIAN.INFO should be:  IY*JX*4*13

The "-convert big_endian", ibyte=1, and with IFC8 work for our Mandrake
LILUX computer.

One possible reason for your problem is related to the netCDF library
you installed, can you "ncdump GLCC10MIN_BATS.CDF", or write a simple
code to read GLCC10MIN_BATS.CDF ?

>
> SGI Altix is different from Origins which runs IRIX. We checked the
> porting guide and did not see anything relevant in terrain.f. Here is
> the link to the document.
>
> http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/browse.cgi?coll=linux&db=bks&cmd=toc&pth=/SGI_Developer/Porting_Guide
>
> We would appreciate any hint. Does RegCM3 still depend on UDUNITS?

No, we don't need UDUNITS from now on.

Regards,
Bi Xunqiang

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Dr. Xunqiang Bi         email:bixq at ictp.it
   Earth System Physics Group
   The Abdus Salam ICTP
   Strada Costiera, 11
   P.O. BOX 586, 34100 Trieste, ITALY
   Tel: +39-040-2240302  Fax: +39-040-2240449
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~