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AIX 5 3 testing

             AIX 5.3 Available for Testing on NCSA's IBM p690
                      updated: 4 November 2005

NCSA's IBM p690 is being upgraded to AIX 5.3. Three 32-processor systems have 
already been upgraded and are now available for testing at no charge. 
Here are the differences between the old and new software stacks:

                        Old    New
                        ---    ----
   AIX                  5.1    5.3
   C/C++                6.0    7.0
   Fortran              8.1    9.1
   Load Leveler         3.1    3.3
   Parallel Env (MPI)   3.2    4.2
   GPFS (filesystems)   2.1    2.3

To test the new software stack, log in to cu11.ncsa.uiuc.edu and run as you 
would on cu12. cu11 is configured the same as cu12 with the following 
exceptions: 

 - On cu11, batch jobs have a maximum wall clock limit of 6 hours.

 - For now, normal batch jobs on cu11 are limited to 32 Gbytes and
   dedicated jobs are limited to 64 Gbytes of memory. NCSA will make
   an announcement when the memory limits are raised to 128 Gbytes 
   for normal jobs and 256 Gbytes for dedicated jobs.

 - While home directories and /usr/local are the same on both cu11 and
   cu12, cu11 (and the other hosts running AIX 5.3) have their own (shared)
   copy of /scratch/users (~/scratch-global) and /scratch/batch 
   filesystems. To copy directory "dir" from cu12's /scratch/users to 
   cu11, enter the following command on cu11:

      scp -r cu12:/scratch/users/$USER/dir /scratch/users/$USER

   Note that the "cdjob" command on cu11 will only work for jobs 
   submitted from cu11. You should continue to use "cdjob" on cu12 
   to change to the batch directory for jobs submitted from cu12.

 - In general, programs built using the old software stack should 
   run without problems, but we recommend that you recompile your 
   programs to test the new compilers.

During the testing period, please note the following:

 - The new software stack is not intended for "production" runs.
 
 - Since no one is charged for usage, please be careful not to dominate
   usage of the systems with the new software stack at the expense 
   of other users.

 - Please restrict interactive use on cu11 to compiling and debugging.

If the testing goes as planned, all IBM p690 systems will be taken
out of service on Monday, November 28.  At that time, all batch jobs will
removed from the queues and all 32-processor systems will be upgraded
to AIX 5.3. The upgraded system is expected to be available for use by 
Wednesday, November 30.

Please contact the NCSA Consulting Office via electronic mail at
consult@ncsa.uiuc.edu or by telephone at (217) 244-1144 with any
questions or problems.
IBM pSeries 690:usr/news/AIX_5.3_testing
Last Modified: November 4, 2005