P7 Linux Cluster

P7 Cluster (P7)
Installed	May 2011
Operating System	Linux (RHEL 6.0)
Interconnect	Infiniband
Ram/Node	128 Gb
Cores/Node	32 (128 Threads)
Login/Devel Node	p7n01 (from login.scinet)
Vendor Compilers	xlc/xlf
Queue Submission	Torque

Specifications

The P7 Cluster consists of 5 IBM Power 755 Servers each with 4x 8core 3.3GHz Power7 CPUs and 128GB Ram. Similar to the Power 6, the Power 7 utilizes Simultaneous Multi Threading (SMT), but extends the design from 2 threads per core to 4. This allows the 32 physical cores to support up to 128 threads which in many cases can lead to significant speedups.

Login

First login via ssh with your scinet account at login.scinet.utoronto.ca, and from there you can proceed to p701 which is currently the gateway/devel node for this cluster.

Compiler/Devel Node

From p701 you can compile, do short tests, and submit your jobs to the queue.

GNU

gcc/g++/gfortran version 4.4.4 is the default with RHEL 6.0 and is available by default.

IBM

To use the IBM Power specific compilers xlc/xlc++/xlf you need to load the following modules

$ module load vacpp xlf

NOTE: Be sure to use "-q64" when using the IBM compilers.

MPI

OpenMPI is available for both compilers

$ module openmpi/1.5.3-gcc-v4.4.4

$ module openmpi/1.5.3-ibm-11.1+13.1

IBM's POE is installed but due to current problems with loadleveler/lapi/poe it is not recommended for use.

Submit a Job

Currently a vary basic torque (pbs based) queuing system has been setup with one 48 hour batch queue.

Create a script as follows:

#!/bin/bash 
# p7script.sh
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=128,walltime=1:00:00
#PBS -N P7test

cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR

mpirun -np 128 ./a.out

Then submit

qsub p7script.sh

Interactive sessions can also be facilitated with

qsub -I -l nodes=1:ppn=128,walltime=1:00:00

To see running jobs use

qstat 

and to cancel a running or queued job

qdel JOBID