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NUIT >
SSCC >
Bulletins >
SSCC Hardware Upgrade October 2-8, 2006
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SSCC Hardware Upgrade October 2-8, 2006Thanks to co-funding from the Social Sciences Computing Cluster's major partners, the compute nodes on the SSCC will be replaced with the latest compute technology this October. We need your cooperation as we prepare for this upgrade, particularly by making sure that jobs running on the SSCC will be finished by October 2. The Social Sciences Computing Cluster will be removed from service for the week starting Monday October 2, 2006 in order to perform extensive hardware upgrades. The SSCC will return to service on Monday October 9, 2006. Please note the following interruptions in service during the upgrade week: • ALL SSCC Interactive Hosts (seldon, hardin2, mule2) will be unavailable October 2-October 8. • ALL interactive jobs running on seldon, hardin2 and mule2 will be terminated on October 2. • ALL SSCC Batch Nodes will be shut down on October 2. • ALL SSCC batch jobs still running on October 2 will be lost. This includes jobs running at the time of shutdown and those waiting in a queue to begin execution. We cannot transfer batch jobs to the new SSCC system configuration. • All user accounts and home directory files will be unchanged by this upgrade, but files in scratch directories on seldon, hardin2 and mule2 will disappear. Electronic mail service on seldon, hardin2 and mule2 will be unavailable during October 2-October 8. New computers will be installed during the week of October 2-October 8. The upgrades include the following: • Seldon and Hardin2 will be replaced with Dual-CPU AMD Opteron Model 254 (2.8 GHz) machines, each with 16 GB of memory. These machines are expected to run 2-3 times faster than the AMD Athlons currently in use. The AMD Opterons are also Intel-compatible CPUs, but, like the Athlons, their speed in MHz is not directly comparable to the speed of Intel CPUs in MHz. • Mule2 will be unchanged. • Sixteen batch nodes will be added with the same dual-CPU architecture, but with 8 GB of memory per dual-CPU machine. The new AMD Opteron CPUs provide 64-bit memory address support, so that jobs requiring more than 2 GB of memory may be run with programs that provide 64-bit capability. • Software applications will be upgraded to 64-bit capability as they become available. Currently, that includes MATLAB, Stata, GAUSS and the Portland Group Fortran and C/C++ compiler suite. Other applications may be transparently run in 32-bit compatibility mode on the new machines. The timing of this change is designed to facilitate the needs of people with computational deadlines in late September as well as people with deadlines in November. The technical details of this upgrade will be documented separately on the SSCC web site at http://sscc.northwestern.edu. Funding for this upgrade was provided by the generous support of President Henry Bienen, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the Kellogg School of Management, the School of Education and Social Policy, the Institute for Policy Research, and NU Information Technology. If you have questions concerning your preparation for the SSCC upgrade, please contact: Bruce Foster (bef@northwestern.edu) or 847/491-4055. |
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