CSAR Bulletin issued in September 2004

Newton Changes - October

The next period of upgrades to Newton is about to begin. This phase will see the four 64 processor partitions combined to a single system image (SSI), it will also see the interactive and development machine move to what is currently called newtd. We are proposing the following timetable:

5th October: Interactive service will move to newtd. There should be no change in procedures apart from ssh keys may need to be updated. On the day newtd will be unavailable from noon. newt64i will be unavailable from 16:00. After this PM the interactive service and the development area will have been removed from newt64i onto newtd. Batch jobs up to 252 can be submitted to Newton.

Late October: What was newti, newta, newtb and newtc will be unavailable for a day as it is changed to an SSI. Details will be announced in a maintenance message.

Newton Intel Compiler and MPT Update

We will shortly be changing the default version of the MPT library (for MPI and SHMEM applications) on newton to a more recent version. The current default is v1.8 and we will make the new default v1.10 on 19th October. This version contains minor performance upgrades to collective routines as well as some increased functionality.

We currently are awaiting the Intel Compiler v8.1 which promises to give significant improvements over existing versions. This version is compatible with the version 8.0 compiler, however object code can not be mixed between the version 7.1 (current default) and the version 8.0 compiler. We urge everyone to consider using this as soon as is convenient before we make this the default.