The CSCAMM IBM SP/2

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Overview

Dawson is an IBM SP/2 (cluster) awarded to the University of Maryland by IBM as part of a Shared University Research (SUR) grant in 2001. The cluster is part of the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling in the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CMPS).

The cluster exists for the purpose of assisting with and performing scientific research consistent with CSCAMM's mission. Projects from the original SUR grant, CSCAMM or CMPS faculty affiliated with CSCAMM are elligible to apply for use of this system.

The CSCAMM IBM RS/6000 SP/2 is a distributed-memory parallel system (cluster) consisting of one frame with a total of 8 Compute Nodes, each containing 4 x 375 Mhz POWER3 64-bit CPUs, all nodes are running the AIX operating system (v5.1). Projects for this cluster include production research applications, research in porting serial applications into a parallel model and teaching parallel computing.

Hardware

• "Dawson" IBM SP/2:
  • 8 "WinterHawk II" IBM RS/6000 SP 375MHz POWER3 SMP Wide Nodes
    • Processors:
      • 4 x 375Mhz POWER3-II 64-bit superscalar CPUs
      • Up to four double precision floating-point operations per cycle
      • L1 Cache: 128-way set associative: 32KB instruction, 64KB data (single cycle)
      • L2 Cache: 4-way set associative: 8MB (250Mhz, 32-byte wide bus)
    • Memory:
      • 4 Gigabytes of RAM (128-bit data path, 93.75Mhz system bus)
    • Network:
      • IBM SPSwitch (MX2) Interconnect (intranode)
      • 10/100 Integrated Ethernet (internet)
      • Gigabit (1000SX) Ethernet (not used)
    • Disk storage (internal):
      • Two (2) 18.2GB Ultra SCSI-2 Disk Drives (Mirrored)
      • 4 Gigabytes Swap (paging) Space
      • 6 Gigabytes Scratch Space
  • 2 IBM D40 SSA Disk Drawers
    • Disks:
      • 16 x 36.4GB 10,000 RPM Serial Storage Architecture Drives
      • Each drawer configured as three 5-disk RAID-5 Arrays with a shared hot spare
  • Interconnect:
    • IBM SP Switch (MX2)
    • 150 Megabytes/s unidirectional (1200Mb/s)
    • 300 Megabytes/s bidirectional (2400Mb/s)
    • 1.3 µsec latency
  • IBM 7044-170 RS/6000 Workstation (SP/2 Control Workstation)
    • 332Mhz PowerPC CPU
    • 256MB RAM
    • 20GB 8mm Tape Drive
    • CD-ROM Drive
    • Mirrored 9.1GB SCSI-2 Disk Drives (system)
    • 2 x 10/100 Ethernet
  • IBM 7044-270 RS/6000 Workstation (SP/2 Front End Workstation)
    • 2 x IBM RS/6000 SP 375MHz POWER3 SMP
    • 2GB RAM
    • CD-ROM Drive
    • Mirrored 18.2GB SCSI-2 Disk Drives (system)
    • 10/100 Integrated Ethernet
    • Gigabite Ethernet (1000SX) - (currently unconfigured)
  • General Parallel File System (GPFS)
    • 582.4 Gigabyte GPFS Shared Filesystem
      • 4 x 145.6 Gigabyte RAID-5 Arrays (from D40 drawers)
      • 4 x SSA RAID Controllers (2 primary, 2 backup)
      • Uses two nodes shared with cluster
      • One backup node in case of failure
      • 2 hot spare disks

Software

• Operating System:
  • AIX 5.1
  • Maintenance Level 2
• Compilers:
  • XL Fortran 7.1
  • C For AIX 5.0
  • VisualAge C++ for AIX 5.0
• Libraries:
  • IBM Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Libnrary for AIX
  • IBM Parallel Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library for AIX
  • IBM Parallel System Support Programs (MPI Libraries)

For more information or help...

Questions and problems should be directed to CSCAMM system staff by contacting Bill Burns or by email .

    Bill Burns
    Room 4144 CSIC Building
    301-405-8923

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