This goal of this project was to evaluate the capability and limits of current scientific simulation development tools and technologies with specific focus on their suitability for use with the next generation of scientific parallel applications and High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms. The opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors, and reflect the authors' current understanding and functionality of the many tools investigated. As a deliverable for this effort, we are presenting this report describing our findings along with an associated spreadsheet outlining current capabilities and characteristics of leading and emerging tools in the high performance computing arena. This first chapter summarizes our findings (which are detailed in the other chapters) and presents our conclusions, remarks, and anticipations for the future. In the second chapter, we detail how various teams in our local high performance community utilize HPC tools and technologies, and mention some common concerns they have about them. In the third chapter, we review the platforms currently or potentially available to utilize these tools and technologies on to help in software development. Subsequent chapters attempt to provide an exhaustive overview of the available parallel software development tools and technologies, including their strong and weak points and future concerns. We categorize them as debuggers, memory checkers, performance analysis tools, communication libraries, data visualization programs, and other parallel development aides. The last chapter contains our closing information. Included with this paper at the end is a table of the discussed development tools and their operational environment.
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