General FAQ

Why Should I Use VF tools?

  1. I am already an expert in parallel programming, why bother using VF tools?
  2. I've never programmed in parallel, can VF tools help me?
  3. What makes you better than...?
  4. Can I download your parallelization libraries?

Subscription

  1. Do you automatically extend my subscription after it expires?
  2. How do I pay?
  3. Why do I need a MultiSafePay account?
  4. How is the Vector Fabrics business model different?

Free Trial

  1. What features does the trial version include?
  2. How long is the trial period?

System Requirements

  1. What Operating Systems, browsers and Adobe Flash are supported?
  2. Can I use my firewall, popup blocker and antivirus with VF tools?
  3. What Operating Systems and processors does the vfTasks library support?
  4. How to resolve SSL certificate problems when opening my project?

Input languages

  1. What programming languages do you support?
  2. Do you support already multithreaded programs?

Why Should I Use VF tools?

I am already an expert in parallel programming, why bother using VF tools? You speak MPI, POSIX threads, OpenCL, CUDA and OpenMP? Great, then you know from your experience how much hassle it takes to identify code suitable for parallelization. VF tools help you spot parallelizable parts of your program automatically. Got dependencies in your code? Our tools will still try to identify parallelization opportunities. Don't know all the 100 thousand lines of your program? VF tools will lead you by the hand to the compute-intensive parts of the code and will highlight the heavy-computation loop in the source.

I've never programmed in parallel, can VF tools help me? Sure! VF tools guide you towards the parallelizable code in your program. Once, you're happy with the speedup estimates our tools provide - you'll find code refactoring recipes telling every line of your source code you have to modify to run it in parallel. Even my 6-year old daughter can do that.

What makes you better than...? VF tools are unbeatable in investigations of subtle parallelization scenarios. Think 2D loop carried dependencies, windowed-FIFO streaming in functionally partitioned code. Check out our parallelization speedup estimates for your platform, be it an Intel Atom or and ARM Cortex A9 multicore.

Can I download your parallelization libraries? Sure! We provide several handy libraries that greatly simplify code parallelization. Check out our download page.

Subscription

Do you automatically extend my subscription after it expires? No. After your subscription expires your account will be removed. So you can easily just buy a subscription for a limited amount of time to experience the product, no strings attached.

How do I pay? You can either pay online with a credit card or bank transaction, or you can request an invoice.

Why do I need a MultiSafePay account? To ensure the security of your credit card details, we use an external provider called MultiSafePay that specializes in online transactions ant related security.You need to create an account here to be able to pay. This account is fully separate from the Vector Fabrics account for additional security.

How is the Vector Fabrics business model different? There are no up-front licensing fees for any of Vector Fabrics tools. Instead, there is a modest subscription fee.

Free Trial

What features does the trial version include? The trial includes all features of the product, but you cannot upload your own code. The trial includes a number of demo applications of various complexity that you can parallelize.

How long is the trial period? 30 days. If you need to extend your trial, please submit a support ticket.

System Requirements

What Operating Systems, browsers and Adobe Flash are supported? We support Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Adobe Flash of 10.x is supported, see http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer. Check out our System Requirements page.

Can I use my firewall, popup blocker and antivirus with VF tools? Yes. During the launch of your project our website provides a link that you can click, if the popup window is blocked. Furthermore, we communicate with the VFCloud using the standard HTTPS protocol, which is open by most (corporate) firewalls.

What Operating Systems and processors does the vfTasks library support? The vfTasks library to manage thread distribution among processor cores is provided as source here. It builds on Ubuntu 10.04 and Microsoft Windows 7. The Linux build relies on the POSIX threads, whereas the Windows one uses the Windows threads. If you are interested in the Android version of the library, please, contact us. vfTasks runs on Intel x86 and ARMv7 processors.

How to resolve SSL certificate problems when opening my project? From the start of 2012 we installed new Comodo SSL certificates. Some client browsers don't have the new Comodo root certificate "High-Assurance Secure Server CA" installed and don't acquire it automatically. In particular, this may occur with the Firefox browser: on launching your project it responds with a warning "This Connection is Untrusted". To resolve this symptom you can install the missing certificate manually with the following steps:

  • visit the Comodo certificate website
  • click on the "Download" button and then "Save File"
  • in the Firefox menu go to Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Encryption->View Certificates. Note, that the new Comodo "High-Assurance Secure Server CA" certificate is not present in the list.
  • in the "Certificate Manager" dialogue select the "Authorities" tab, click "Import" and then "Open" the just downloaded ".crt" file
  • Firefox will ask in a popup window the purpose of this certificate. Check "Trust this CA to identify web sites." and click OK.
If you encounter the same issue in Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can download the same certificate and import it in your browser.

Input Languages

What programming languages do you support? Vector Fabrics tools support ANSI C99. If you are interested in support for other languages, please contact us. For more information refer to the C Language Compatibility Guide (login required).

Do you support already multithreaded programs? No, our tools do not yet analyze multithreaded code as input. When we model parallelized code, we perform virtual parallelization within our tools. Please, create a support ticket, if you need this feature and specify what multithreading library you'd like to have (POSIX threads, WIN32, OpenMP, etc.).