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Location Watergraafsmeer - IBM RS 6000/SP ('SOLO')

Location:

SARA, Amsterdam

Contact:

J.P. Hollenberg (hollenberg@sara.nl)

About SOLO

Access

The system can be accessed via the Internet: the name of the interactive part of the machine is solo.sp.sara.nl.

The recommended access tot the system is via ssh and scp

The batch nodes are not accessible from outside the SOLO system

Operating system

AIX (Unix)

Batch system

Loadleveller

Compilers

xlf: Fortran 77/90
xlc: C/C++

Libraries

  • NAG: numerical and statistical library
  • IMSL: numerical and statistical library
  • ESSL: numerical library from IBM
  • P-ESSL: the parallel version of ESSL
  • SPRNG: Scalable Parallel Random Number Generator
  • the GNU suite
  • DX: visualisation package
  • SCALAPACK: parallel numerical library
  • PVM: parallel library
  • MPI: parallel library
  • POE: The Parallel Operating Environment from IBM

The SP system consist of three "towers" or "frames" and two separate servers. Two of the frames contain eight so-called "nighthawk-2" nodes, each of which contains 16 Power3 processors (375 MHz), with 1 Gbyte of memory per processor. The third frame contains 3 "winterhawk-2" nodes, each consisting of 4 Power3 processors with 1 Gbyte of memory per processor. The two seperate servers are p690 (also called "Regatta") servers, each containing 32 Power4 processors (1.1 GHz), with 1 Gbyte of memory per processor.

The two nighthawk frames and the p690 servers (128 + 64 processors respectively) will be used as batch environment for scientific computations, the winterhawk-2 frame will be used for special applications.

The nodes of the SP system constitute a so-called distributed SMP (symmetric multiprocessor) system. Each node is an aggregate of multiple processors (4 for winterhawk-2, 16 for nighthawk-2 and 32 for regatta). Hence, within one node the shared memory concept can be used in programming, for which OpenMP is available. Of course, MPI can be used as well for communication between the processors. Between nodes you have to use the distributed memory programming concept. Communication between the nighthawk-2 nodes is performed via the switch.

The main connection between the nighthawk-2 nodes is the so called "switch" (officially named "SPswitch2"). The switch connects the nodes, not the individual CPUs. Within a node the CPUs are connected to an internal network that also integrates 16 Gbytes of RAM-memory into a shared memory addressing space.

A substantial part of the capacity is available for Dutch researchers in general.

Location: SARA. Contact person: J.P. Hollenberg (hollenberg@sara.nl).

 

About SARA

 

SARA Computing and Networking Services is a center of expertise in the area of computers and networks. SARA supplies a complete package of High Performance Computing- and infrastructure services, based on state-of-the-art information technology.

 

SARA was founded in 1971 by the Free University in Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam and the Mathematical Center. In 1985 SARA acquired the status of National High Performance Computing Center and hosted the Dutch national supercomputer. Apart from this SARA hosts a number of other supercomputers, some of which in co-ownership with other universities.

 

SARA specializes in:

  • High Performance Computing (production, manipulation, simulation and visualization of data)
  • High Performance Networking
  • Information Management
  • Facility Management of computer systems and networks.

SARA offers her customers:

  • High performance computer systems: vector, shared memory and distributed memory
  • Experimental systems
  • Virtual reality (CAVE and ImmersaDesk)
  • Bulk data storage
  • Advanced national and international networks
  • Vast expertise in the areas of High Performance Computing and Networking, parallelization (PECA), optimalization of software, virtual reality and facility management.

For further information please contact: SARA Computing and Networking Services, Marketing and Sales Department, P.O. Box 94613, 1090 GP Amsterdam. Email: marketing@sara.nl.

Links

SARA

http://www.sara.nl

High Performance Computing

http://www.sara.nl/HP_compute/index.html

Product information

http://www.sara.nl/hpc.www/solo/description/index.html

Manufacturer

http://www.ibm.com/nl/

Product information

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/largescale/sp.html