MSRC News
Nietubicz: Kudos to Brown, Brainard and Kendall
After it was announced on Jan. 12 that Charles J. Nietubicz would assume the duties of Acting Deputy Director of CISD for 120 days, Denice Brown was selected to temporarily assume Nietubicz’s duties as Division Chief of the High Performance Computing Division, CISD, and Director of the ARL MSRC.
As a result of Brown's acting position, Lee Ann Brainard became the Acting Branch Chief for the Computer Systems Branch, and Tom Kendall became the Acting Deputy Director of the ARL MSRC.
Thanks to the High Performance Computing Division (HPCD), the move went very smooth.
According to Nietubicz, all three stepped in and immediately displayed the leadership qualities and expertise that have defined their careers.
Said Nietubicz, “It is a testament to their professionalism and work ethic that they were able to perform their new duties flawlessly.”
Nietubicz added that he is grateful for the job they did in their acting positions and the great job they are currently doing in their respective positions. Great job, Denice, Lee Ann, and Tom.
Center teams with Linux NetworX, Intel on workshop
Linux NetworX’s Evolocity II cluster computer (Powell) users have probably witnessed how the supercomputer’s blend of power and lightning-quick processing speeds equaled shorter runtimes and faster turnarounds in their work.
Still, because commodity cluster technology is relatively new, ARL MSRC staff members feel that users will benefit from hands-on training from experts who are well-versed on the nuances of cluster computing.
Thus, the ARL MSRC, along with Linux NetworX and Intel, hosted a three-day workshop March 29-31 at the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., for users of the cluster computer.
The users–some traveling from as far away as Florida-–attended and participated in lectures from Linux NetworX and Intel engineers, learned how to properly submit jobs and ran codes on Powell.
“ The workshop provided face-to-face training that the participants wanted and needed,” said Steve Thompson, Customer Support Team lead and workshop co-organizer. “The goals here were for them to learn about Powell, run codes, and basically pick our brains.”
One such participant, Dr. Guy Schiavone, a user and a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Fla., ran a code from his project involving line-of-sight intervisibility between entities.
Schiavone, one of six Floridians who made the trip, said, “We use smaller clusters at school, but the Powell offers so much more computing power."
" Plus, the lectures and training were invaluable.”
The lecturers, Tom Quinn and Chris Worley from Linux NetworX and Steve Lionel and Jason Choy from Intel, discussed topics ranging from the cluster’s operating system to Helpdesk support to Intel’s processors, tools, and optimization potential.
During the Users Group Conference (UGC) in Williamsburg, Va., June 7-11, Thompson said that the ARL MSRC will offer two more Linux workshops for users.
For more information email Thompson at thompson@arl.army.mil.
New Users orientation
Educating new users about the ARL MSRC’s vast computing environment is very important to those who work at the supercomputing center here.
That point was further driven home on Nov. 13 when Charles J. Nietubicz, Acting Deputy Director of the Computational and Informational Sciences Directorate (CISD), welcomed 23 online users to the ARL MSRC’s New Users Orientation Webcast.
The orientation was webcasted and users from as far as Redondo Beach, Calif., listened to and asked questions to Steve Thompson, Customer Support Team Lead, who gave users an overview of the ARL MSRC’s tools, software and queuing system. Tom Kendall, Chief Engineer, also answered questions and gave a presentation that provided an overview of the center’s hardware.
An orientation over the web is the brainchild of Nietubicz, who felt that while users might benefit from a traditional in-person orientation, a webcast is more cost-effective. Plus, said Nietubicz, a webcast allows users to participate from anywhere.
Load Sharing Facility becomes standard for all MSRCs
To make all four of the Department of Defense Major Shared Resource Centers more consistent to users who compute at multiple centers, a decision was made recently that all of the supercomputing sites will use Platform’s LSF (Load Sharing Facility) as their queuing system.
Like Grid Engine, the new queuing system will give system administrators the capability to move urgent and high-priority jobs to the top of the queue, allowing the new jobs to start ahead of all other pending jobs. LSF also performs resource reservation with backfill, a feature that determines that at a designated time in the future, a job will run and the resources required for that job will be reserved. LSF then will execute jobs that can be completed before this computed start time, thus using only the resources that are currently free.
The ARL MSRC will implement LSF for the first time when the Technology Insertion 2004 machines arrive this summer. Eventually, LSF will be added to Powell (Linux NetworX Evolocity II) and Shelton (IBM pSeries 690 SP), supplementing Grid Engine. LSF will not be added to Zornig (SGI Origin 3800), which will use Grid Engine until its retirement.
ARL MSRC staff members are trying to make this transition as smooth as possible. For more information, email Steve Thompson at thompson@arl.army.mil.
ARL MSRC introduces new software policy
On June 1, the ARL MSRC, which supports approximately 75 software COTS applications, announced a new policy of keeping only two versions of COTS applications software. The policy was created to reduce disk space and to eliminate stockpiles of old versions of software still in use.
“Historically, the ARL MSRC has added new versions of software without deleting older versions,” said Steve Thompson, Customer Support Team Lead. “Thus the number of installations has grown and become rather unwieldy.”
Thompson added that only current versions and one previous version of software will be available.