Intel software products - How to call a ship ...

As they say, how you call a ship, so write on it. And over the past five years, Intel has been launching on the market tools for developers with sonorous and "clever" names - Parallel Studio, Composer XE, VTune Amplifier XE and so on. Honestly, there are so many names and various packages that they “intersect” so often that there is a serious confusion (I will tell you a secret - even inside Intel), and often potential users simply do not know what they need to choose. Let's try to streamline what was and is in the software flotilla Intel, and analyze the typical problems with its crew. We will talk about tools for systems with shared memory, cluster tools will not be considered, although the situation there is largely similar.

It's not so scary!

Problems

So, in view of the confusion, there are a number of problems. "Numero uno" - where to find the compiler, and the version needed by the developers? It is no secret that quite often there is a need for a specific, stable, proven build and you need to know exactly which installation package to download and where. Agree, it is far from obvious that the name “Composer XE SP1” harbors compiler version 14.0. How it is - C ++ ompiler 11.1 - and immediately everything is clear.



The second uncertainty is that at one time there were two packages on the market, the name of which differed by only two letters - Parallel Studio and Parallel Studio XE, but the functionality differed much more seriously. Now there is essentially no such problem, but users still remember the name Parallel Studio, and, for them, this is the same as Parallel Studio XE. But the updates for Parallel Studio are still being sold through the official website .



In addition, there are certain problems with the general package Parallel Studio XE . This toolkit, which is available as one installation file, is extremely rarely updated. Although updates to its components are constantly. Fortunately, the license for the entire package allows you to download components separately, so you have to update them manually. That, generally speaking, casts doubt on the very logic of having a single installer. Here you paid your “hard-earned money”, received a whole set of funds, put it, but it turned out that everything was already outdated like 8 months, and a whole lot of updates came out on all the components. In principle, this difficulty was also solved with time.

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Explanations

Now we will try to understand why we received such names and a layout of funds. Let's start with the history of the development of software development tools that Intel offers. We will not go far into the past - we restrict ourselves to the five-year plan.



Intel had no “packaged” products until 2008. There was a compiler, which was called Intel Compiler, a VTune Performance Analyzer performance profiler, tools for profiling and debugging multithreaded applications Thread Profiler, Thread Checker, libraries (TBB, IPP, MKL), but so that everything is straight and in one place - not. But the mentioned time became the time of development of multi-core, and, accordingly, the heyday of parallel programming. And so a set of tools appeared on the scene:

• compiler (Parallel Composer),
• profiler (Parallel Amplifier),
• dynamic error analyzer (Parallel Inspector),
• Parallel Advisor.

Accordingly, the entire product was called Parallel Studio, which is quite logical, isn't it? Note that it was released only under Windows, and was focused on mainstream developers.



It is from the Parallel Studio package that the names that are still used have gone. But first things first. First, why Composer, and not the compiler? The question is complicated, and it would be worthwhile to learn from marketers. But only the following explanation arises in my head. As the comte de la Fère, the noble Athos, said, to call simply a compiler is “too little.” Indeed, besides the compiler itself, the libraries MKL, IPP, TBB are also included (which makes sense, since the compiler can, for example, determine that the code multiplies the matrices and calls for it the optimized IPP code). And to call the whole package on one component - somehow a lot for the compiler. Although before it was. Needless to say, such a renaming entailed many questions from the category “where did the compiler go then?” And “where is the version I need, dude?”, As I have already said.



Let's continue the historical review. Naturally, the release of such a package for Windows was only the first step, and quite quickly (a little over a year later) the next version appeared - Parallel Studio XE. Two "extra" letters in the title seriously enough changed not only the price, but also the essence. XE, by the way, stands for eXtreme Edition. The package was not only for Windows, but Linux, in addition, there were differences in component versions. The same compiler in the Parallel Studio XE package had more functionality than in Parallel Studio.



For a long time these two packages could not exist, and there was no such goal - Parallel Studio went down in history, having inherited the names of many components. As a result, only the Parallel Studio XE package remained - so to speak, the strongest survived:

• Composer XE . Remember that this is a compiler and libraries.
• VTune Ampliifer XE . Yes, yes, our marketing friends decided that the word VTune would help sales, and, by the way, turned out to be quite right - VTune is a tool legend. Successfully assembled Parallel Amplifier (the same one that was in the very first Parallel Studio package) + improved VTune Performance Analyzer and Thread Profiler, provided an excellent tool for profiling multi-threaded applications.
• Inspector XE . Here Parallel Inspector and Thread Checker were crossed, plus a static analyzer was added to the compiler, which beautifully displayed the results exactly in the Inspector window. By the way, this feature was made available only for the entire Parallel Studio XE package.

Note the disappearance of the word Parallel at the beginning of the names of all components. This is due to the fact that with these tools you can compile and profile and inspect not only multi-threaded, but single-threaded applications.



That's all that was in the package XE - 3 tools designed to facilitate the harsh realities of software development. By the way, due to the fact that the problem with the version names was obvious, we decided to number them by year. Thus, the full name of the package was Intel Parallel Studio XE 2011.

It is clear that with time XE 2013 appeared, and with it a new tool - Advisor XE , which existed before in the Parallel Studio, but for XE it was offered as a separate experimental “toy” that could be completed. Subsequently, Advisor XE also became a full-fledged part of the studio.

Problem solution

How to avoid confusion and find exactly what you need? First of all, you need to be very careful and pay attention to any differences in the name. Remember that Intel Parallel Studio and Intel Parallel Studio XE are different products and their licenses are different. This also applies to studio components. Let's say Parallel Composer and Composer XE are not the same thing!

If you are the happy owner of the studio XE, purchase an extension just for this version. By the way, you can purchase all the components separately.



The problem with installing the latest versions was partially solved by Intel Software Manager. Now that you have installed the general package, it will automatically find the latest updates available to you and offer to download and install them. Very convenient, considering that before you had to go to the Registration Center and do everything manually. But, as I said, it solves the problem partially - with some configurations it refuses to work correctly, in particular due to the weak support for proxy settings. Putting it separately will also not work, only with one of the latest versions of the studio or its components. So far, unfortunately, there are a number of other problems, but in the latest version all this will be taken into account and corrected.



A lot of information can be found on official resources, though mostly in the language of Shakespeare. Let's say there is the contents of all the packages by component.



Regarding the compatibility of versions of the compiler and the Composer XE package, there is an interesting table here . It will help to find full compliance not only with the versions of the compiler, but also with the libraries. Also, by the way, a non-trivial task. I decided to jot down a simple tablet here, so that it was:

Composer XE version	Compiler version
2011	12.0, 12.1
2013	13.0, 13.1
2013 SP1	14.0
2015	15.0

By the way, it is clearly seen that if earlier two versions of the compiler were included in one version of the package, it seems that now we are switching to a new principle. At least, we will not see version 14.1. As you can see, I added the XE 2015 version to the tablet. Recently, its beta testing began, but other posts will soon appear about the studio's novelties, and now everyone has a good day, well, or nights.



And finally, since you now know the entire history of the emergence of Parallel Studio XE. Have you encountered similar problems of “packaging” with other companies?

In the picture, by the way, there are two "ships", with packages of tools, which I obviously did not voice. But there you can guess what the difference is, if you know the product line well. Who noticed, or maybe used these tools and will indicate the correct answer?