SciNet News June 2012

June 5, 2012 in for_researchers, for_users, newsletter

EVENTS COMING UP

  • Thu Jun 7: SCHEDULED SHUTDOWN OF ALL SCINET SYSTEMS

    There will be a full SciNet shutdown on June 7th from 6AM to at least 10PM.

    This is the final scheduled shutdown in preparation for the installation of the IBM Blue Gene/Q system. A new machine room has been built (walls, raised floor, cooling unit, electrical and water connections), but downtime is required to connect 800 kW of power from our electrical room to the new room.

    All systems will go down at 6 AM on Thu 7 Jun; all login sessions and jobs will be killed at that time.

    At the earliest, the systems will be available again around 10PM in the evening of Thu 7 Jun. Check the SciNet wiki (wiki.scinethpc.ca) for updates on Thursday.

  • Wed Jun 13, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm: JUNE SCINET USER GROUP (SNUG) MEETING

    The SciNet Users Group (SNUG) meetings are every month on the second Wednesday, and involve pizza, user discussion, feedback, and one or two short talks on topics or technologies of interest to the SciNet community.

    • TechTalk by Ramses van Zon on “Remote development on SciNet systems”
    • User discussion
    • Pizza!

    Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/66

  • Jun 25-28: Ontario Summerschool on High Performance Computing / Central

    The Ontario Summerschool on High Performance Computing provides attendees with opportunities to learn and share knowledge and experience in high performance and technical computing. This year, the Ontario Summerschool on High Performance Computing will have more than one installment. The first, in London, is from Jun 4-7. The second will be in Toronto, hosted by SciNet, from Jun 25-28.

    The format will be a four day workshop with mixed lectures and hands-on sessions on a number of selected subjects, including shared memory programming, distributed memory programming and general purpose graphics processing unit programming. The graphics cards and distributed memory sessions will be given in parallel.

    This event will be held at the University of Toronto (St. George campus), but not at the SciNet Headquarters.

    For more information on this event, see the temporary description at

    https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/67

    Next week the official registration site should be accessible at

    http://www.sharcnet.ca/event/ss2012-central

  • Wed July 9, 12:00 noon – 13:30 noon: INTRO TO SCINET

    Learn what SciNet resources are available, how to compile your code and how to use the batch system, in approximately 90 minutes.

    Intended for new users, but experienced users may still pick up some valuable pointers.

    Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/68

SYSTEM CHANGES:

  • GPC: a newer git version 1.7.10 is now available as a module (the default is still 1.7.1).
  • GPC: silo is installed as a module
  • GPC: gcc 4.7.0 available as module (version 4.6.1 is still the default)
  • HPSS: Jobs will now run automatically.
  • ARC: cuda 4.1 and 4.2 are available as modules (Note: 4.2 is not supported by the ddt debugger). cuda/4.1 will be the default as of Jun 8.
  • P7: ncl available as a module
  • P7: scons available as a module

ADDED TO THE WIKI IN MAY

All new wiki content below is listed and linked on the main page: http://wiki.scinethpc.ca/wiki/index.php/SciNet_User_Support_Library#What.27s_New_On_The_Wiki)

  • Intro to SciNet slides
  • ADIOS TechTalk, slides and source code
  • Updates to the HPSS page

WHAT ELSE HAPPENED AT SCINET IN MAY?

  • May 8-9: Scheduled shutdown of all SciNet systems for maintenance and system testing.
  • May 9: Intro to SciNet session
  • May 9: May SNUG meeting with TechTalk by Jonathan Dursi on “Parallel I/O doesn’t have to be so hard: The ADIOS library”.
  • May 12: SciNet participated in Science Rendezvous.
  • May 14-18: SCICOMP, the IBM HPC Systems Scientific Computing User Group (which is part of the meeting of SPXXL, the user group of large IBM installations).