This document contains last-minute information about the final release of Sun WorkShop(TM) Version 6 LoopTool 2.3. It describes the software corrections addressed by this release and lists the known problems, limitations, and incompatibilities.

Note - This is the last release of LoopTool. In later releases, its functionality will be incorporated into the Analyzer.

To view the text version of this document, type the following at a command prompt:

    example% more /<install-directory>/SUNWspro/READMEs/looptool.readme

To access the HTML version of this document, point your Netscape(TM) Communicator 4 or comparable Netscape version browser to:

    file:<install-directory>/SUNWspro/docs/index.html

Replace <install-directory> with the path to your Sun WorkShop installation directory. In a default installation, <install-directory> is /opt.

Note - If your Sun WorkShop software is not installed in the /opt directory, ask your system administrator for the equivalent path on your system.

For more information about this product, see:

• Sun WorkShop 6 Release Notes -- Describes installation-related and late-breaking information about this final release. Information in the release notes overrides information in all readme files.



• About Sun WorkShop 6 Documentation -- Describes the documentation available with this Sun WorkShop release and how to access it.



• What's New in Sun WorkShop 6 -- Describes the new features in this release.

These documents are accessible in HTML by pointing your browser to <install-directory>/SUNWspro/docs/index.html. Replace <install-directory> with the path to your Sun WorkShop installation directory. In a default installation, <install-directory> is /opt.

Note - If your Sun WorkShop software is not installed in the /opt directory, ask your system administrator for the equivalent path on your system.

Contents 

1. About LoopTool
2. Software Corrections 
3. Problems and Workarounds 
4. Limitations and Incompatibilities 
5. Documentation Errata 

LoopTool 2.3 extends the WorkShop development tools and compiler with support for performance tuning of automatically parallelized programs.

LoopTool runs on the Solaris(TM) 2.6, 7, and 8 Operating Environment.

LoopTool has not changed since the release of Sun Workshop(TM) 5.

LoopTool 2.3 is included in the following Sun Workshop products:

• Sun Visual WorkShop(TM) C++ 6
• Sun Performance WorkShop(TM) Fortran 6
• Sun WorkShop Professional(TM) C 6

Inner/Outer Loop Times:

Loop times are measured as wall-clock elapsed time. If a loop is parallelized, it is credited with the elapsed time for all of the instances of the loop. Thus, inner parallelized loops may sometimes be credited with more elapsed runtime than the outer loop that encompasses the parallelized loop. This is not a bug, this is expected behavior. But it can be misleading.

Cutoff:

The LoopTool GUI allows you to specify a cutoff. This cutoff figure should be entered as an integer between 0 and 100. The loops shown in the histogram are those that account for cutoff percentage of the runtime of the longest running loop. This is not a bug, but since the LoopTool GUI does not explain this, the cutoff figure may be mysterious at first.

Source directory:

If LoopTool cannot find the source file for a selected loop, it prompts you for the source path. Simply choose any file in the source directory that contains the source file(s) for your program - it is not necessary to select the exact file name.

There is no new information at this time.

For updates, check Hot News for Sun WorkShop 6 ( http://www.sun.com/workshop/users/ws.html).

The online help for LoopTool is not available from the Help menu and Help buttons inside LoopTool. However, you can access it from the main Sun WorkShop Help Table of Contents. In the WorkShop main window, choose Help > Contents, and follow the link "Analyzing the Loops in Your Program".

LoopTool 2.3 is available for SPARC(TM) platforms only.

There is no new information at this time. 

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