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%\title{Austrian Center for Parallel Computation}
%\Large{Austrian Center for Parallel Computation}
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%%%% \maketitle

\section{What is the ACPC?}  

%ACPC (Austrian Center for Parallel Computation) 
%combines several institutes and personalities in a for Austria quite new way 
%--- as a national-wide research and education institution in a very up-to-date
%field of computer science namely the software development for
%parallel computers.

The Austrian Center for Parallel Computation (ACPC) is a joint organization
formed by seven institutes at the universities of Linz, Salzburg and Vienna.
The ACPC was founded in 1989 to promote research, education and industrial
cooperation in the area of parallel computation in Austria and is supported
by the Austrian Research Foundation and the Austrian Ministry of Science and
Research. At present, approximately 50 researchers at the levels
of professor, senior and junior researcher, and doctoral student
from these seven groups are united in the ACPC effort.

Each group of the ACPC is specialized  in a different subarea of parallel 
computation (parallel symbolic computation, parallel numerical applications,
parallelization of programming languages, parallel computer graphics and
visualization, theory of parallel computation, parallel hardware and software
systems, $\ldots$). Hence, the ACPC groups profit from a lot of synergy
effects by several joint research projects.

Participants in the ACPC are at present seven academic groups headed by
(in alphabetical order):

\begin{itemize}
\item[] Prof.\ Bruno Buchberger, RISC-Linz
\item[] Prof.\ G{\"u}nter Haring, Institute for Applied Computer Science and
                           Information Systems, University of Vienna
\item[] Dr.\ Wolfgang Kleinert/Doz.\ Christoph {\"U}berhuber, Technical University of Vienna
\item[] Prof.\ Peter Schuster/Doz.\ Othmar Steinhauser, Theoretical Chemistry Group, 
                                           University of Vienna 
\item[] Prof.\ Jens Volkert (Spokesman), Department for Computer Graphics and Parallel
                Processing, Institute for Computer Science, University of Linz
\item[] Prof.\ Hans P.\ Zima, Institute for Software Technology and
                                   Parallel Systems, University of Vienna
\item[] Prof.\ Peter Zinterhof, RIST++ Salzburg
\end{itemize}


\section{Aims of the ACPC}

%The intention of ACPC is that of a distributed campus. Thereby a variety of
%resources can be reached that form an internationally important potential in
%teaching and research. Cooperations can be made with corresponding local and
%foreign partners in research and industry.

%In research work, the aim is to have uniform basic hardware equipment
%and this is about to be realized. Furthermore the individual locations of ACPC
%will get, respectively already have, special hardware equipment according to
%their specific research projects.

%In the area of teaching a special curriculum will be offered for students
%of diploma theses in computer science, mathematics, and related fields.
%This curriculum obeys the regulations of the AHStG
%(Allgemeines Hochschulstudiengesetz, i.e. the legal basis for studies at 
%Austrian Universities)
%and the special
%University laws with respect to construction and extent. The curriculum
%may also be studied as an option. The different locations offer regularly
%the necessary basic lectures and practical courses. In addition each
%location offers special lectures according to the specific research projects.
%Furthermore students of Ph.D. theses may study a curriculum in the field
%of software for parallel systems of international quality. An important
%feature of the education is the regular presence of local and foreign leading
%personalities from research and industry as guest professors. The curriculum
%offers attractive possibilities also for foreign students.

The ACPC aims at focusing and coordinating the Austrian academic research and
graduate education in the area of parallel computation. It starts from the
past and present academic research activities at the major Austrian
universities and organizes a series of interrelated new research projects in
the area of software for parallel architectures and applications of parallel
computation. The ACPC started a graduate special curriculum in parallel
computation as a part of a computer science or mathematics master's or Ph.D.\
program. The ACPC puts a particular emphasis on motivating Austrian software
and hardware companies to cooperate in pursuing the goals of the ACPC and in
initiating projects that transfer foundational research in parallel
computation into industrial products (software, systems).

Summarizing, the main activities for achieving these goals of the ACPC are:
\begin{itemize}
 \item The ACPC organizes joint research projects between the various
       members of the ACPC with a special view to achieving synergy.
       Many of these projects also include partners from outside the
       ACPC, thereby embedding the ACPC in the international activities
       in the research in parallel computation.
 \item The ACPC has already designed a joint curriculum for diploma and
       doctoral students who want to specialize in the
       area of parallel computation so that students
       can easily get credit for courses taken at a
       different site of the ACPC.
 \item The ACPC cooperates with several industrial partners in joint work
       leading to a technological transfer and marketable
       products. Furthermore, the new results of ongoing projects are
       offered and presented to the industry such that immediate profit can 
       be taken out of these scientific developments.
 \item The ACPC encourages researchers and students to
       visit and to study at different sites within the
       ACPC. By this, the researchers and the students can get profit
       out of the research in different subareas of parallel computation
       that is done at the different sites.
 \item To improve the knowledge transfer in the area of parallel computation
       not only inside the ACPC, which is done by regular internal ACPC 
       workshops, but also with other institutes working
       in this area, the ACPC has organized the `1$^{\rm st}$ International
       Conference of the Austrian Center for Parallel Computation' in
       Salzburg, in October 1991. This was the first of a series of
       conferences that will be held every two years. Furthermore, the
       ACPC regularly organizes workshops that deal with special aspects
       of parallel computation. Another important means for the international
       knowledge transfer is the `ACPC Technical Report Series' in which 
       all the groups of the ACPC publish their new research results.
 \item The ACPC has set up a powerful network over which
       all partners of the ACPC can access all parallel
       machines available at the various sites. Therefore, all researchers
       in the ACPC have access to almost all modern parallel architectures.
       This manual aims at giving the reader an overview of these parallel
       architectures their characteristics, location in the network and 
       the software that is installed on these machines.
\end{itemize}

\section{The ACPC Network}

The ACPC Network is a network of parallel computers located at the individual
institutions that form the ACPC.  In order to reach each of these computers
they have been combined to the ACPC Network. Therefore, it should be possible
for every person from one of the ACPC groups (but also from outside) to reach
any computer in the network. Thereby, the ACPC Network grants access to
essentially every interesting parallel architecture.

From the hardware side the network is based on the already existing
connections that combine the universities in Austria. As the whole network is
itself a part of the world-wide Internet, the machines can be reached from any
part of the world that has access to the Internet.  For a more detailed
description of the hardware upon which the network is based see
Chapter~\ref{hw-con}.

However, just building up the hardware and operating system layer for
combining various machines in a network is of course not enough to give other
users the opportunity of working on remote machines. For this purpose, also a
description of the software and of the working environment on the machines in
the network is necessary. Therefore, the main part of this manual
(Chapter~\ref{fac}) deals with the description of the hardware and of the
software that is available at each ACPC group. This should be used as a first
information to get a quick overview of the available facilities in the
network. However, if somebody is interested in one special software product
that is installed on one of the machines he/she may refer to the documentation
of the software products that is available at each of the ACPC
groups\footnote{For a list of the documentation that is available at each
group see Section~\ref{docu-list}.}. However, that part of the documentation
that has been distributed over all groups has been kept as small as possible.
Hence, one should also contact the network coordinator of the group where the
software product has been installed to get more information.

\section{Guest Accounts}

In the ACPC Network, on each machine some guest accounts have been installed.
Hence, each ACPC group has one such guest account on each  machine
in the network\footnote{See Section~\ref{fac} for a description of each of the
machines in the ACPC Network.}. The purpose of this account is to
offer all members of the group the possibility to have a look on each 
available machine, in order to decide whether it is 
interesting to apply this particular machine.
This opportunity is especially intended for students who want
to get an overview of the available hardware without
themselves having to visit all the institutes of the ACPC. 
As there are now  many different architectures available in the
ACPC Network, every person working in the ACPC can choose the most 
appropriate architecture for his application.

However, these guest accounts are only intended to get a very first
experience.  Typical actions performed under this account will be for example
the reading of on-line manuals to study some details or just having a look
what is new on the machine. As soon as somebody wants to do some real work
this person should apply for a personal account and then work under this
account. For an explanation of this application procedure see
Section~\ref{appl-proc}.

As such guest accounts are always a potential security hole for each machine,
there may be some security measures taken to avoid an unauthorized usage.
However, there is no global security strategy but each system administrator
may decide about this independently. The user of a guest account must
therefore be prepared to be confronted with one or several of the following
security measures:

\begin{itemize}
 \item The user might be asked for his email address such that the system gets
       information who is actually logged in.
 \item The permissions of some files like {\tt .cshrc} might be set such that the
       user can not modify them.
 \item The group of the user may be set in such a way that it will not allow
       him any additional actions.
 \item The password of the guest account might have to be changed regularly.
\end{itemize}

These security measures may lead to a rather inconvenient guest account.
But as this account is only intended for some simple actions like listed 
above this should be no problem. Hence, the general rule is that whenever
some serious work is done on a machine, a personal account shall be installed.

\section{The Account Application Procedure}      \label{appl-proc}

This section will describe how to get an account on any  machine
in the ACPC Network. The main motivation for introducing this standard application
procedure was to get the information about who is actually working on
a certain machine. We have tried to make the whole procedure as 
convenient for the user as possible. However, some minimal effort in
applying for an account is inevitable.

\begin{figure}

  \horiz

  \input{general/appl-form1}

 \caption{Application Form (Part 1)}  \label{appl1}

 \horiz

\end{figure}

\begin{figure}

  \horiz

  \input{general/appl-form2}

 \caption{Application Form (Part 2)}  \label{appl2}

  \horiz

\end{figure}

%\begin{figure}
%
%  \horiz
%
%  \input{general/appl-form3}
%
%  \horiz
%
% \caption{Application Form (Part 3)}  \label{appl3}
%
%\end{figure}


All you have to do for getting an account on a certain machine is to
fill in the application form that is shown in Figures~\ref{appl1} and 
\ref{appl2} and to send the form to the system administrator of that machine.
As soon as the account has been created, the user will be informed about the
login name and the password via email. The application form that is shown 
in Figures~\ref{appl1} and  \ref{appl2} %and \ref{appl3} 
is available at all ACPC groups and as a file at the official ACPC anonymous
FTP server.
The filled in form can be sent via FAX to speed up the whole process
of account application.


\section{The Official ACPC Anonymous FTP Server}

In the ACPC the exchange of files is usually handled in such a way that
the sender puts files on a special FTP server, the so called official
ACPC anonymous FTP server, and announces the availability of this file
to the receiver. This procedure is especially recommended if the file
has to be sent to several persons or if it might be of interest to several
persons or if it should be made publicly available for a longer time.

The address of the official ACPC anonymous FTP server is:
{\tt ftp.risc.uni-linz.ac.at} directory {\tt pub/acpc}.
Physically, the FTP server is located at RISC-Linz in Hagenberg.

The information in the FTP server is structured into several subdirectories:
\begin{itemize}
 \item The directory {\tt Manual} contains the sources of the ACPC Manual
       as well as the complete current version of the manual in the
       files {\tt acpc-manual.dvi.Z} and {\tt acpc-manual.ps.Z}.
       The latter two files are a compressed dvi and a compressed Postscript
       file, respectively. This directory is further structured into 
       subdirectories: 
       \begin{itemize}
        \item For each group there is one subdirectory containing the 
           information
           that is specific to this group (this includes the information
           in Chapter~\ref{groups} and Chapter~\ref{fac}). 
        \item The directories {\tt general} and
          {\tt appendices} contain general information that appears in the first
          chapters of the manual and in the appendices of the manual,
          respectively. 
        \item The directory {\tt forms} contains the current
          hardware and software forms that must be used to incorporate new
          hardware or software into the manual. Furthermore, this directory
          contains the account application form that is also shown in 
          Figures~\ref{appl1} and Figures~\ref{appl2}. The other files
          in the {\tt forms} directory specify the structure of the overall
          manual and of the group specific information.
       \item The directory {\tt suggest} contains suggestions for changes
          in the ACPC Manual.
       \end{itemize}
       However, this information should be only of interest 
       for the ACPC Network Group, who maintains the manual. For others
       only the above two files, containing the manual itself will be 
       relevant.
 \item The directory {\tt Misc} contains miscellaneous information not
       fitting elsewhere.
 \item The file {\tt News} contains important news that might be of interest
       for all ACPC groups. 
 \item There are subdirectories for several ACPC groups that are maintained
       by these groups and that contain informations of these groups that
       has to be published or sent to other people.
\end{itemize}

As an alternative to using the ACPC anonymous FTP server for sending 
files normal email should be used if the files should be sent only
once to one person. For this purpose we recommend the following procedure:

\begin{enumerate}
 \item Make a tar file out of all files that have to be sent. This file 
       should have the extension `.tar' (e.g.\ foo.tar).
 \item Compress this file using standard compress. 
       This is not only important to minimize the data that
       has to be actually sent but it is also important as some mailers
       might restrict the size of emails they are sending. Using GNU Zip 
       instead of compress will yield even shorter files. However, if you
       want to use this compression format please make sure that the receiver
       also has the GNU Zip program available. The resulting file should
       have extension `.Z' if it has been compressed or `.z' if it has been
       zipped (e.g.\ foo.tar.Z).
 \item As the whole email system is intended to send ASCII text files only,
       there will be problems with sending binary files (such as dvi files).
       Certain bytes in these files will be interpreted (such as CTRL-D as
       end of file) and therefore the files in general won't be received in 
       the same form as they have been sent. Therefore, all binary files
       must be uuencoded before they can be sent (using the command
       uuencode $<$file$>$ $<$name$>$). 
       The resulting file should have extension `.uue' (e.g.\ foo.tar.Z.uue).
       This file now can be sent via email.
\end{enumerate}

\section{The ACPC Mailing List}

In order to facilitate and to speed up the communication among  all members
of the ACPC the ACPC mailing list has been created. The idea of this mailing
list is that all emails being directed to the mailing list are automatically
sent to all subscribers of the mailing list. Therefore, any message can easily
be sent to all interested persons in the ACPC. However, as every email that
is sent to the ACPC mailing list will be received by everybody in the ACPC,
this should be used only for topics that really affect all ACPC groups.

The email address of the ACPC mailing list is: {\tt ACPC@aearn.bitnet}.

It has to be emphasized that sending to the ACPC Mailing List is not a 
privilege of ACPC members only. Especially, it can be used for the 
announcement of workshops, talks or other events in the area of 
parallel computation.
  
%\end{document}
