Common Open Source High Productivity Languages

BC Project: FY10-02
Date of Policy: 28 Jun 2010
Last Updated: 19 Feb 2015

High productivity languages have recently become an important part of scientific computing and visualization both within and outside the Department of Defense (DoD). Leading high-productivity languages include the commercially available MATLAB, open source Python (with its scientific computing add-ons) and open source Octave. Each of these high-productivity languages forms an integral part of a standard library that includes text processing, file I/O, data compression, and a host of capabilities ranging from basic numerical linear algebra to complex data visualization.

The main objective of this policy is to provide the following common open source high-productivity languages environment across all five DSRCs within the HPCMP:

  • Python (General Purpose Scripting Language)
  • IPython (Interactive and Parallel Computing Tools)
  • NumPy (Numerical Arrays and Linear Algebra in Python)
  • PyMPI (Python Message Passing Interface)
  • MPI4Py (Python bindings for MPI)
  • SciPy (Scientific Python)
  • Octave (MATLAB Clone)
  • Matplotlib (Scientific 2-D and 3-D Plotting)

This high-productivity languages environment will be supplemented with other open source productivity languages as they become available on HPCMP allocated systems.

All information on how to access any of the productivity languages is provided in BC Common Capability "Open Source High-Productivity Languages.