I'd like to announce two new GSAS/EXPGUI releases for Macintosh
computers running OSX 10.4 (not 10.3) that bring the Mac up-to-date
with the April 2006 release of GSAS for Windows and Linux.
There is a release for older Macs with PowerPC CPUs (G4/G5). This
version completes the GSAS test suite in about half the time of the
previous release:
http://www.bessrc.aps.anl.gov/xtal/OSX_gsas+expgui_PPC_2007Jan15.dmg
(14 Mb)
The increase of speed is due to use of g77 compiler optimization.
There is also a release compiled for newer Macs with Intel CPUs.
Comparing a 1.67 GHz G4 laptop with a 1.66 GHz Intel mini, this
release runs the GSAS test suite again about twice as fast as the new
optimized PPC version:
http://www.bessrc.aps.anl.gov/xtal/OSX_gsas
+expgui_Intel_2007Jan15.dmg (32 Mb)
This required a switch to a newer compiler (g95). While it completes
the test suite fine, it should be considered as beta-test since the
test do not exercise all of the code. If any questionable results are
obtained, before reporting a bug, confirm that the PPC GSAS version
in emulation (rosetta) or the Windows version produce a different
result with the same input and .EXP files.
For those interested: with a dual core Mac, two GSAS runs do complete
in almost exactly the same amount of time as a single job; Also, PPC
emulation is something like a factor of 5 slower than running GSAS
native.
Brian
