[FLASH-USERS] FLASH 3.0 release

[Anshu Dubey]

The Flash Center is pleased to announce the release of the
next major version of the FLASH code, version 3.0. FLASH 3.0 offers
many advantages over the FLASH 2.5 release. The more significant
advantages of FLASH 3.0 are :

* Clean public interfaces for each code unit.

* Increased modularity through better encapsulation of code
units, making it considerably easier to incorporate third party software
into FLASH.

* Support for a uniform grid.

* Support for face variables.

* Support for defining blocksizes at runtime. This feature can
enable FLASH to use meshes that do not require all blocks be
equal in size.

* Ability to switch between uniform and adaptive Grid for the same
application.

* Support for directionally un-split time integration.

* Unit test framework and many unit tests.

* Significantly enhanced setup script, see Chapter 5 in the user's guide
for details.

* New Staggered Mesh unsplit MHD solver.

* New, more efficient multigrid algorithm.

* More scalable algorithms for Particles management.

* Significant optimization of the multipole algorithm for many problems.

* More robust and efficient IO implementation.

* Extensive web published API documentation for all units in the code.

Capabilities added since the beta release include:

* Full support for active particles, including new, more scalable
algorithms for mapping the particles to the mesh.

* A new multigrid solver for self gravity (courtesy of Paul Ricker).

* The Cosmology unit

* The Relativistic Hydrodynamics Unit

* A parallel FFT solver that can be used with Uniform grid

* Many simulation setups and unit tests.

The FLASH3.0 release is available for download with a license agreement
at:

http://flash.uchicago.edu/website/download/

A stripped down version of FLASH3 that may be downloaded without a
license is also available at the same location. This version is
essentially the FLASH framework without any implementations.
Flash Center is also providing support for "add-ons" to the
code. Please see the section on "What's new in this release" in the
first chapter of the user's guide for details.


Additionally, the FLASH testing software FlashTest, which became
available with the alpha release, continues to be available for
download at:

http://flash.uchicago.edu/website/codesupport/

Many, but not all parts of FLASH3 are backwards-compatible with
FLASH2.  The Flash code group has written extensive documentation
detailing how to make the transition from FLASH2 to FLASH3 as smooth
as possible.  The user should look to:

http://flash.uchicago.edu/website/codesupport/

The website also contains other documentation including
a user's guide and a developer's section.  A new feature in FLASH3
documentation is the online description of the public interface
routines to various code units.


FLASH should be portable to most UNIX-like operating systems with a
python interpreter, Fortran 90 compiler,  C compiler and MPI library.
Please see the RELEASE-NOTES included in the FLASH source home
directory for a list of compilers, platforms and
library versions that are known to be compatible with FLASH.

FLASH output can be visualized using VisIt, a free interactive
visualization tool developed by Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratories under the ASCI initiative. VisIt is available from

http://flash.uchicago.edu/website/codesupport/visit, and
https://wci.llnl.gov/codes/visit

To use the current released version of Visit with the FLASH file
format version 9 (the 3.0 release version) users will need a patch
which is also availble from

http://flash.uchicago.edu/website/codesupport/visit

Development of the FLASH Code was funded by the DOE-supported
ASC/Alliance Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes.  We
acknowledge support received from Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and the University of Chicago.

All publications resulting from the use of the FLASH Code must
acknowledge the ASC/Alliance Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear
Flashes.  Addition of the following text to the paper acknowledgments
will be sufficient.

         "The software used in this work was in part developed by the
         DOE-supported ASC/Alliance Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear
         Flashes at the University of Chicago."