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data link Story: University of Kentucky Upgrades System |
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University of Kentucky Upgrades SystemThe University of Kentucky is replacing its SPP X-Class Exemplar supercomputer with a cluster of HP N-Class servers. Following benchmarking of the new HP N-4000 complex, the University of Kentucky is ranked 10th out of 17 academic centers in the US, and 200th out of the top 500 supercomputing sites world-wide on the TOP500 list. The new NCX cluster provides significant enhancements over the previous X-Class system.
Previous New %
X-Class N-Class Improvement
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# of Processors 64 96 50%
Processor Speed (MHz) 200 440 120%
Memory (GB) 16 96 500%
Disk Space (GB) 288 1368 375%
Operations/sec (GFLOPS) 51 169 231%
In contrast to the SPP Exemplar, which is a single server with 64 processors, Kentucky's new supercomputer consists of twelve HP N-4000 servers interconnected by a high-speed, low-latency "hyperfabric" network. Each of the 12 individual nodes has eight PA-8500 processors running at 440 MHz (for a total of 96 processors). The PA-8500 processor is approximately twice as fast as the processors used in the SPP Exemplar. Each node has 8 GB of main memory (for a total of 96 GB) and 108 GB of disk space. The "login node" has an additional 72 GB of disk space, for a total of 1368 GB (1.3 TB) of disk space for the entire cluster. Although each node operates as a fully independent machine running HP-UX, the message passing architecture allows jobs to use processors on several nodes, up to a total of 96 processors. Transfer to the new system will entail certain changes that will affect all users of UK's supercomputing facility. Users accustomed to working with the architecture and software tools on the SPP Exemplar will find that there are significant changes when compared to the current system. In order to make users aware of the changes that will be encountered upon their transfer to the new system, staff have prepared documentation of the changes including new user information and transition documentation. They will also be offering a series of workshops in the coming months to familiarize users about the NCX cluster, along with programming and optimization techniques. Kentucky began transferring users over to the HP N-4000 cluster in late July. Users who need assistance making their codes work on the new system may send email to help@hpc.uky.edu. A member of the Kentucky HPC team will contact users to schedule times to provide help. The SPP Exemplar system will remain available for a short period during the time that users are being moved over. Users who might require a more lengthy overlap period should contact help@hpc.uky.edu as soon as possible. For More Information
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