Data Services Newsletter

Volume 11 : No 2 : Summer 2009

SAC v101.3

New version of the SAC software released in August 2009

IRIS DMC is pleased to announce the release of SAC v101.3. You can get to the SAC download registration (for either a source distribution or precompiled distributions for selected systems) , a detailed update history, and a link to an online manual through this URL. There are SAC binary-distribution compressed tar files for these operating systems:

  1. Sun Solaris: built on Solaris 2.9, but runs on 2.8 or 2.10.
  2. Mac OS X: Universal binary distribution built on i686 (Intel) OS 10.4.11 but runs on OS 10.4 PPC and both i686 and PPC on OS 10.5 (10.5.2 or later).
  3. Linux 32-bit: built on CentOS release 4.5 (Final).
  4. Linux 64-bit: built on CentOS release 4.7 (Final)

(Although a source distribution can be obtained for Cygwin, because of licensing issues, IRIS cannot provide a Cygwin binary distribution.)

About SAC

SAC (Seismic Analysis Code) is a general purpose interactive program designed for the study of sequential signals, especially time-series data. Emphasis has been placed on analysis tools used by research seismologists in the detailed study of seismic events. Analysis capabilities include general arithmetic operations, Fourier transforms, three spectral estimation techniques, IIR and FIR filtering, signal stacking, decimation, interpolation, correlation, and seismic phase picking. SAC also contains an extensive graphics capability. SAC Software has been distributed to over 2,000 scientists and programmers by the IRIS DMC since 2005.

What is new in version 101.3?

Among the new features in this version are

  • 64 bit native builds are now available
  • Help now uses a pager, like “more” or “less”
  • New program sgfswap (byte-order swap for SGF files)
  • Update to evalresp version 3.3.0
  • Updates for matlab routines
  • Updates to programs sacswap, sgftops, and bbfswap
  • Updates to sacio functions
  • Documentation Updates
  • Added Testing suite

Future Plans

Releases of SAC are planned for every six to nine months. These include bug fixes identified by the greater seismological community and enhancements to increase the usability of SAC. Upcoming versions of SAC are expected to have new features including:

  • Enhanced Tutorials and User Guides
  • Further Updates on Documentation
  • Graphic output directly to Postscript and PDF
  • Handling of extremely large data sets
  • Additional functionality in the SAC library (libsac)
  • Updated User Interface (Optional)

Requests for usability and functionality enhancements to SAC are always welcome. Bug fixes and requests should be sent to the SAC Mailing list: sac-help@iris.washington.edu.

More Information

If you would like to know more about this software, visit the SAC webpage

Request SAC Software

Binaries and source release (Version 101.3b): August 2009.
NOTE: an error was found in Version 101.3 and has been corrected in Version 101.3b.

by Peter Goldstein and Arthur Snoke (Lawrence-Livermore National Lab)

23:25:44 v.01697673