Clemson Computational Minigrid Supercomputing Facility
Upcoming shutdowns:
None scheduled this summer - so far :)
Overview
The Clemson Computational Minigrid Supercomputing Facility is a
collection of Beowulf Clusters interconnected to form a computational
grid. The grid consists of 4 Beowulf clusters; Adenine, a 64 node
cluster located in the Parallel Architecture Research Lab and used
primarily for system software research; Thymine, a 32 node cluster
dedicated to the Center for the Advanced Engineering of Films and
Fibers; Guanine, a 32 node cluster dedicated to the Clemson University
Genomics Institute, and Cytosine, a 128 node cluster shared by all the
groups. Each node in each cluster contains two 1 GHz Pentium III
processors. The clusters internal networks are connected together
through multiple trunked gigabit fiber links. With these links, and
the modifications we've made to the Scyld Beowulf Linux Operating
System running on the machines, it is possible for us to "borrow" nodes
from clusters connected to the grid, allowing up to 512 processors
to be assigned to a single job on any of the attached clusters!
Recent News
Lately, we've run a lot more 256-and-up processor jobs. Jobs this size
test the limits of many aspects of conventional programs, and perfectly
good 32 node programs don't work anymore. Above are some experiences and
hints for dealing with things that won't scale; let print statements,
file access, tips for scripts, etc.