ACADEMIA

Visual displays enhance ability to view how programs use memory - Etnus, LLC, maker of the world's most scalable multi-process debugger on Linux, UNIX, and Mac OS X, announced today the release of version 7.2. This release adds the ability to graphically view how programs use memory by displaying this information as line, bar, or pie charts. When programmers need more detailed information, they can either select part of a chart or display memory usage information as data tables. "As programs grow larger and process greater amounts of data, developers need to understand how their programs acquire and manage memory," comments Scott Tate, Vice President of Marketing of Etnus. "By understanding how programs use memory, developers can quickly identify when their programs have problems or when they must reshape algorithms to best use available resources." The TotalView memory and source code debuggers are integrated into a single product, so programmers can interactively locate memory problems while finding programming errors. This interactive approach is easier, simpler, and far more productive than post-mortem analysis. Because it is simpler, programmers find problems while they are developing their code instead of when they receive a customer complaint. These new memory charting features enhance the TotalView Memory Debugger, which already allows developers to: • Identify memory leaks and the place in the program where the leaked memory was allocated. • Graphically display heap memory. • Stop program execution in real time when problems such as freeing memory occur, to identify exactly when and where the problem occurs. • Identify dangling pointers. • Compare memory states. • Save memory states, for comparison within the same program or future executions. • Interactively filter memory information, to enable focus on what is important. • Paint memory when it is allocated, so programmers can identify when memory is being used before it should be. Other changes to TotalView include support for: • Novell SuSE Linux 10. • Novell and Red Hat Update versions. • Argonne MPICH2 1.0 on many of our platforms. • Sun One Studio 11 compiler support. Fully functional TotalView trial licenses may be downloaded from the Etnus website at its Web site.