[Ngspice-users] Questions on Parallelizing NGSPICE

[praneet <pr...@su...>]

Hello Everyone,

We at Sun Microsystems just got started with NGSPICE.
So, apologies if you don't find the questions asked below as 
particularly bright.
We are evaluating NGSPICE and trying to figure out if it is suitable for 
distributed computing.
Eventually, NGSPICE* may be* available on Sun Grid 
(http://www.sun.com/service/sungrid/overview.jsp and 
http://www.network.com/).


I've a few  questions

   1. I downloaded and used ng-spice-rework-17.tar.gz. Can someone
      please confirm if this is the latest code for the app. I am sorry
      to say that the main page appeared confusing to me and I am not
      sure if the tar file I've is the real ngspice.
   2. As Sun Grid runs on Solaris 10 X86, I tried compiling the code on
      x86 and faced problems with a status variable on line number  176
      of src/frontend/aspice.c. I'd to insert a dummy statement there.
      Is it a known issue? Is the commenting out going to materially
      impact the running of application? I am pasting the code here: 
      :-(
                                                                                                           
      171  #if defined(__NetBSD__) || defined(SOLARIS)
         172      pid_t status;
         173  #elif defined(__FreeBSD__) || defined(__APPLE__)
         174      int status;
         175  #else
         176   /*    union wait status; */ */*THIS CREATES PROBLEMS,
      COMPILER SAYS STORAGE ALLOCATION FOR WAIT CANT BE DETERMINED, I
      COMMENTED THIS OUT AND PASTED THE ONE BELOW */
      *   177   int status;  /* Anyways, we are running solaris!!! */
         178
         179  #endif

   3. Coming to the crux of the matter -
         1.  Has there been any attempt in the past to make the app fit
            for distributed computing?
         2.  Is it better to  concentrate on the application or on
            libraries?
         3.  Does the application lend itself to data portioning, that
            is making the same spice code run on all the machines in the
            grid ,giving chunks of data to all nodes and merging the
            output? 
         4. Are there any algorithms known in public domain, which if
            implemented would make ngspice fit/fitter for distributed
            computing?

Any ideas, thoughts, comments even criticisms would be heartily welcome.

Anything else that you think may enlighten us would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks in advance

--praneet
*Sun Grid Applications Team
*/Sun Microsystems/