22 February 2005

This is an approved src.alt for 191.fma3d in CPU2000 v1.2.

It addresses miscompare failure when running multiple copies on a system
running Windows.

To apply the src.alt, unpack the tar file in the top level of the CPU2000
directory.  The following sequence of commands should accomplish this:

$ /bin/sh
$ cd <cpu2000 dir>
$ . ./shrc
$ go top
$ specgzip -dc <src.alt tarball> | spectar -xvf -

Please replace the items in angle brackets ( <> ) as appropriate.

To have the src.alt applied during compilation, please add the following
stanza to your config file:

  # Enable 191.fma3d standard C++ src.alt
  191.fma3d=default=default=default:
  srcalt=windowsdp

A performance neutral change was made to fma1.f90.  The output file, fmaelo,
is renamed to fmaelo.out so that the SPEC tools can delete it before beginning
the next run of fma3d.  A race condition was discovered in Windows where a
process which has fmaelo open can still have it open when the next process
begins in the same directory.  This situation can cause a conflict in
accessing the file.  While the previous job may still have the file handle
open, the next process attempts to access or write to the file causing a file
I/O error which appears as a miscompare to the user.  In order to avoid the
conflict, the file is renamed so that the SPEC tools can delete it before the
next job begins.  This error has only been seen in jobs running on dual
processor systems with 2 users (-u2), though the issue can potentially occur
during speed runs too. 

Please address any questions about this src.alt to cpu2000support@spec.org.