								March, 1994
CIDER1b.1 Installation Notes
-------------------------
  Follow the instructions for installing SPICE3F2 found in the spice/common
  directory of this distribution.  The instructions are in the readme file.

  Once you have installed SPICE, you should be somewhat familiar with the
  installation process.  The same scripts are used to build the CIDER libraries
  of the distribution.  Configure the conf/defaults file to correspond
  to your system. (Diffs between the original and modified SPICE defaults files
  and the original SPICE and CIDER files should help in modifying the CIDER
  default file.)  You will also need to provide system-specific exception
  files (e.g. a 'mips' file), just as in SPICE.
  
  Build the CIDER source from cider/common using:
    util/build <system> 

  Install the CIDER executable and help file using:
    util/build <system> install

  By default the CIDER executable is placed in cider/<system>/bin, and
  the help file is placed in the SPICE help directory.
  If you are confident that the installation will take place without error,
  you can both build and install using only the second command above.

  The parallel version of CIDER is built by appending the "parallel"
  configuration file to the above commands, i.e.:
    util/build <system> install parallel

  On some systems, the "parallel" file conflicts with the "system" file.
  To compile for parallel, you will have to manually merge the two to
  create a specific "system-parallel" combination file before starting
  the build process.

  The serial version of CIDER has been successfully compiled, installed
  and run on the following systems:
	Ultrix 4, MIPS 
	OSF 1.3, DEC Alpha

  The parallel version of CIDER has been compiled and run on a network
  of Ultrix 4/ MIPS workstations.  A previous version, similar but not
  identical to the current version, has also been run successfully on a
  network of SUN4 machines, including some SparcStation 10's.

  In the past, serial-version CIDER has been run successfully on these systems:
	SunOS 4, Sun4
	HP-UX 8.0, 9000/700
	AIX V3, RS/6000
	Unix SVR3, IPSC/860 node (must be installed manually.)

  A good rule of thumb is that if SPICE3 can be ported to the machine,
  then CIDER can be ported as well with little additional difficulty.
  However, there are two major exceptions to this:
    1.  SPICE3 runs on PC's and Macintoshes.  A port to an MSDOS PC is
    probably infeasible due to memory limitations.  Porting to a Windows PC
    or a Macintosh may be possible, but the level of difficulty of doing
    this is unknown.
    2.  Compilers that demand the ANSI C function prototypes will not compile
    properly.  Prototypes for most of the CIDER functions would need to be
    generated.

Running CIDER
-------------
  The serial version of CIDER has the same set of command-line arguments as
  SPICE3.  The parallel version must be invoked specially however.
  A script has been written that automatically invokes the parallel version
  using the "parallel" command from the TCGMSG distribution.
  The syntax is either:
    qcider -p <num-nodes> <circuit-filename> <suffix>
  or:
    qcider <circuit-filename.ext> <suffix>

  In the first case, thq "qcider" script creates a process-group (".p") file
  containing num-nodes machines to run on.  A list of available machines,
  one-per-line, must either be available in the current working directory in
  a file called "cpuservers" or in a location pointed to by the CPUSERVERS
  environment variable.  Qcider will scan the available machines to identify
  those with the lightest loads, and then set up a ".p" file using those nodes.
  The file is called circuit-filename.suffix.p (the extension is removed).
  On subsequent calls to qcider this file can be reused by omitting the -p
  option to qcider. However, care should be taken to avoid using old .p files
  that correspond to machines that have become more active in the interim.
  Qcider will automatically store the output in "circuit-filename.suffix.raw",
  diagnostic output from all the machines in "circuit-filename.suffix.sum",
  and error messages in "circuit-filename.suffix.err".
    The parallel version is intended for batch use only, and the behavior if
  interactive use is attempted is undefined. The qcider script avoids this
  problem by always running in batch mode.
