CSAR Bulletin issued in October 2003

Newton Service

The Newton service was opened to all CSAR users on 1st October 2003. CSAR staff are continuing to work with researchers in porting and optimising codes, installing application software, preparing documentation and training courses. The first such course is scheduled for Monday 10th November.

For further details and latest information about the service please see link to newton webpage.

Teragyroid - Intercontinental Grid Project

TeraGyroid is an intercontinental grid project to examine Lattice-Boltzmann simulations of Defect Dynamics in Amphiphilic Liquid Crystals. Funded by EPSRC and NSF, it is a collaboration between CSAR, HPCx and the RealityGrid project in the UK and the Teragrid machines in the US at Pittsburgh S.C., NCSA and San Diego S.C.

This project uses the vast compute resources in the US and the UK to simulate many problems in molecular dynamics, these resources will then feed real time visualization also in the UK and the US. Scientific collaborators will access these using VizServer and Access Grid.

For the purposes of these experiments it will be necessary to take two CSAR machines (Green and Newton) out of full production service for periods leading up to SuperComputing '03 and during the conference itself. These dates are subject to minor alterations in order to allow all three services of CSAR, HPCx and the TeraGrid to coordinate their resources but at present the times are expected to be as follows:

• Thursday 30 October: 4pm-10pm
• Tuesday 04 November: 4pm-10pm
• Thursday 06 November: 4pm-10pm
• Tuesday 11 November: 4pm-10pm
• Thursday 13 November: 4pm-10pm
• Saturday 15 November: 4pm-10pm
• Tuesday 18 November midnight - Thursday 21 November midnight

As part of this and other ongoing work it is recommended that people examine their job submission scripts, and where possible use shorter time limits - this will ensure the quickest turnaround for your jobs.

CSAR apologises for the inevitable inconvenience caused but hope that all users will ultimately see the benefits for national supercomputing - it is major developments like this that will drive forward the nature of supercomputing services.

Please see teragyroid link for further information. This page will also serve the latest information on these experiments and the dates.

Withdrawal of Turing Service

As all CSAR users should be aware, Turing is to be retired from service on 31st December 2003.

Most consortia are already using alternative CSAR systems, but we would like to ensure that all users have sufficient time to port their codes and data before Turing is finally switched off. We urge all Turing users to consider what steps need to be performed to ensure a smooth transition to alternative systems.

CSAR staff will be happy to assist in porting and optimising codes for use on Green and/or Newton.

Please contact CSAR if you would like any assistance or have any queries about the transfer of your code or data.

Rundowns on CSAR systems

Whenever there is a scheduled interruption to the service on Green or Newton, it is necessary to rundown the queues in order to ensure that no jobs are lost. Thus for a scheduled maintenance at 4pm on Tuesday, a rundown would be initiated at about 3pm on Monday, as the maximum job time limit is 24 hours. Any job with an expected termination time after about 3pm on Tuesday would be queued. Thus your work is more likely to run in this period if it can be submitted with a short time limit. If you can run jobs with shorter time limits this may give you a quicker turnaround and make better overall use of the system.

Please note that there will be a number of such rundowns prior to and during the Supercomputing 2003 conference in November as mentioned above in the item on the Teragyroid Project. Note also that there are likely to be an increasing number of such planned activities in the future as the experimental work currently being carried out becomes part of the normal production service.