HPC Debugger Add-on for MPI and Cluster-SOA for Visual Studio 2008 Released

Microsoft has updated a free solution designed to streamline remote debugging of MPI or SOA applications running in the context of the company’s Windows for supercomputers platform.

The refreshed HPC Debugger Add-on for MPI and Cluster-SOA for Visual Studio 2008 can now be grabbed from the Microsoft Download Center.

As the official label implies, the HPC Debugger is designed as a Visual Studio 2008 extension which enables customers to launch remote debugging sessions for MPI or SOA applications on a Windows HPC cluster.

Companies leveraging Windows HPC Server 2008 or a Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 can take advantage of the HPC Debugger Add-on for MPI and Cluster-SOA for Visual Studio 2008 in order to debug Message Passing Interface (MPI) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) apps.

The software giant underlines the fact that there are two features that the add-on brings to the table:

“- The first feature integrates the ‘F5’ experience of launching the Visual Studio 2008 MPI Cluster Debugger for C++ MPI applications and your Windows HPC Server 2008 environment, for a better and more integrated debugging experience. A new tool window where you can specify the nodes that the debugging session will use is included.

- The second feature enables a similar ‘F5’ experience for Cluster-SOA applications for debugging on the cluster. Three different debugging styles are enabled: (i) debugging all of the services simultaneously, (ii) debugging all requests made to a service on a specified machine, and (iii) debugging specific requests.”

The December 2010 update to the HPC Debugger Add-on for MPI and Cluster-SOA for Visual Studio 2008 is set up to extend support for the tool.

Customers will find that scenarios such as debugging Durable Session Cluster-SOA clients on Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 clusters are now supported.