Debugging multithreaded Fortran applications

[François-Xavier]

Dear all,

Weuse in our company IFORT 10 (Integration with Visual Studio 2005) and, recently, we decided to parallelize our code with Openmp.

With the help of Vtune Performance Analyzer, we located the most critical sections andmanaged toparrallelized them. We then used the Thread Profiler to analyze the behaviour of the program.

All work fine...until i had to do my first debug. Variables with strange values in VS debugger, hard to locate race conditions (we don't have the Thread Checker product),... Weak point is really the debugging.

On the other hand, I have discovered the parallel studio for C/C++ and watched the possibilities of the advanced parallel debugger.

My questions are then:

1: Why is there no Fortran support with the Parallel studio ? Is it foreseen ? Fortran community is still very active and, according to me, some customers are interested in a Fortran Parallel Studio.

2: How is it possible to debug in an efficient and easyway a multithreaded Fortran program ? In parallel regions, it is nearly impossible to have a correct view of the memory in VS 2005. Is it be better with Ifort 11 and VS 2008? Is the Thread checker the best way to work?

I am awfully sorry if this second question has been asked many times but i didn't manage to find a complete and clear answer.

F-Xavier

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Intel Parallel Studio is aimed at bringing more "mainstream C++" programmers into the parallel world with Intel tools. Many of the features in Parallel Studio are already or soon will be available for Intel Fortran, and others are likely to be added in the future. We recognize that Fortran programmers need help with parallelization too, but they seem to need less convincing to use Intel tools...

Intel Thread Checker is a great tool for finding problems in your code. One of the Parallel Studio features, the "Parallel Debugger Extension", is coming to Intel Fortran later this year.

[François-Xavier]

Thank you for your answer.

I'am glad toread that the parallel debugger extension will be adapted to Intel Fortran. It is the missing tool of the Intel Fortran tools panel.

Franois-Xavier