FAQ

What is Swift?

Swift is a computational system, or framework for flood prediction. It contains parts to read, write, analyse and display geospatial data, as well as a computational solver to predict the spread of a flood. You can read more detail on the system in the about page.

Are the applications on the download page ‘Swift’?

No, these are applications which demonstrate how Swift can be used. They also show what an end product using Swift can look like. Swift is made up of any parts which can be customised into different applications, depending on how it needs to be used.

How is Swift customisable?

The different parts can be connected together to perform reading, writing and display for different applications. Users can also write customised libraries to add functionality to Swift.

How can I create a custom application built on Swift?

Currently, we are only allowing downloads of the demonstration applications. Swift is built on the CSIRO Workspace framework and we hope to release the Swift Workspace plugin in future. The Swift parts are individual operations in the Workspace, which can be connected into a logical workflow within the Workspace editor.

Which version of the Swift demonstrators should I use?

If you have a 64-bit operating system you should use the 64-bit releases, otherwise you should use the 32-bit releases.

How do I know whether my system meets the Swift system requirements?

The core part of Swift will run on almost any recent computer or server. However, there is no easy way to check whether a computer supports OpenCL without a third-party tool (such as OpenCL-z). Most computers with dedicated GPU cards will come with OpenCL support. Otherwise, free OpenCL drivers can be installed, please see the system requirements page for more information.

Why does the Swift GUI demonstrator just show a white screen?

To run the gui demonstrator, you will need to open a project. Two are included, click ‘Open’ then choose ‘proj1’ or ‘proj2’. To run the project, press the ‘Start’ button.

Pressing ‘Start’ in Swift GUI just takes me to a white screen?

It takes a few moments for the OpenCL driver to initialise. If you don’t see anything after a few moments there may be an OpenCL driver issue. To see any output, click on ‘View’ then select ‘Show log’. The log window will appear at the bottom of the screen, this can be detached and resized for a better view.

When I try and run Swift I get an error message saying openCL.dll is missing, how do I fix this?

This means you do not have OpenCL support, which is required to run Swift GUI. If your machine has a graphics card (i.e. an NVIDIA or ATI graphics processor), the latest graphics drivers from the vendor’s website come packaged with OpenCL, so installing these should fix the problem. Alternately, in order to run the program without a graphics card (i.e. on the CPU), you can install an appropriate software-based OpenCL platform. In this case we recommend the AMD APP SDK. Once this has been done, reinstall the version of Swift appropriate to your machine.

I’m getting an OpenCL error in the log, what does this mean?

Error ‘-11’: Some graphics drivers report that OpenCL is capable of more than the graphics card can actually handle, so when the program is run the graphics cards returns an error. We’re aware this is an issue with older NVidia cards and we’re looking into a solution.

Error ‘-54’: This appears to be an issue with running OpenCL on the CPU on the OSX platform. We are currently investigating this issue. It is recommended that Swift is run using the GPU on OSX, if possible.

Error ‘-1001’: This may occur if Swift is being run on Linux system using the beta AMD 3.0 APP SDK driver. We strongly recommend using the stable 2.9.1 driver if possible.

Please post other errors on the forum where our team will be able to look into the issue.