BIG DATA
Australian startup licenses technology to supercomputing vendor
Australian software startup, Guardsoft, has entered into an agreement with Cray Inc. to license Guardsoft’s novel ‘Guard’ debugging technology for use in Cray’s Cascade program. Partially funded by $250 million from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cray will develop a revolutionary new supercomputer based on the company's Adaptive Supercomputing vision aimed at integrating a range of processing technologies into a single scalable platform. 
Guardsoft is based on innovative research and development led by Monash University’s Professor David Abramson in the Faculty of Information Technology. It uses a new technique called ‘relative’ debugging, which allows programmers to trace errors introduced into software as it is modified, or ported from one system to another. Unlike traditional debugging techniques, relative debugging compares the execution of a new program with a reference version that is known to work. “Relative debugging is orders of magnitude faster than existing approaches because the programmer doesn’t have to understand all the details of the code,” said Prof. Abramson. “This is particularly valuable when the person performing the debugging is not the original developer.” Cray selected the new technology as a tool to aid application developers in porting existing programs to Cray supercomputers. “This approach will allow our users to locate errors quickly when existing sequential programs are parallelised, or when they are changed during code development,” said Steve Scott, chief technology officer for Cray. “This new technology has the potential to enhance programmer productivity substantially, and complements the other tools we are developing in the Cascade program.”
Guardsoft is based on innovative research and development led by Monash University’s Professor David Abramson in the Faculty of Information Technology. It uses a new technique called ‘relative’ debugging, which allows programmers to trace errors introduced into software as it is modified, or ported from one system to another. Unlike traditional debugging techniques, relative debugging compares the execution of a new program with a reference version that is known to work. “Relative debugging is orders of magnitude faster than existing approaches because the programmer doesn’t have to understand all the details of the code,” said Prof. Abramson. “This is particularly valuable when the person performing the debugging is not the original developer.” Cray selected the new technology as a tool to aid application developers in porting existing programs to Cray supercomputers. “This approach will allow our users to locate errors quickly when existing sequential programs are parallelised, or when they are changed during code development,” said Steve Scott, chief technology officer for Cray. “This new technology has the potential to enhance programmer productivity substantially, and complements the other tools we are developing in the Cascade program.”