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System Updates

This page contains a summary of updates to compilers and other system changes on the CSAR machines.

Date System Update
29th July 2005

Newton Cluster Reconfigured as Single Machine: Work was completed to reconfigure Newton as a 512 NUMA machine (i.e. the fast interconnect is now across the whole machine). At the same time, it was moved to a 512 SSI (single system image), rather than the previous two partitions, newtd and newt64i. As well as simplifying the system, jobs can now use up to a maximum of 496 processors (16 processors are reserved for interactive use and the operating system).

26th April 2005

Newton Propack Upgrade: The version of Propack has been upgraded to version 3. This will lead to a more stable machine and increased functionality of the OS and the MPT library. However, glibc and math libraries have been updated too and this may effect numerical results. Also, some codes may need to be recompiled, and we recommend recompilation of all codes.

26th April 2005

Newton Default Compiler: The default compiler on Newton has been changed to version 8.1 release 24. The default before this date was version 7.1.044. The version 8.1 compilers can give significant improvements to the performance of your code but code will be incompatible with that compiled with 7.1. We strongly recommend that all users migrate to these compilers.

26th April 2005

Newton Compiler Naming Scheme: We have changed how we name compiler modules. The names of the modules will now all carry the version number, intel-compilers_8.0.046 for example. There is only one exception: intel-compilers. This is the default compiler and is the module loaded by default. The news item Compiler_Version_History lists details of the compilers.

24 - 28th January 2005

Newton Moved to a New Hosting Facility: During the first stage of the process to reconfigure Newton as a single 512 processor NUMA machine, the two seperate 256 processor machines (newtd and newti) were moved to a new hosting facility at Reynolds House. Following this move Newton remains configured as two seperate 256 processor machines "newtd" (interactive and batch) and "newti (batch only).

22nd December 2004

Default santmp quota: The default santmp quota has been increased from 20GB to 40GB.

22nd November 2004

MIPSpro Compiler Upgrade: The default version of the MIPSpro compiler has been changed to version 7.4. The previous version 7.3.1.2 will remain on the system and users can keep this as their default by adding the command: module switch MIPSpro MIPSpro7312

4th November 2004

Intel Compiler Upgrade: Version 8.1 of the Intel compilers have been upgraded to the latest release, build 8.1.021 (Fortran) and 8.1.024 (C++). The previous version has been moved to the 8.1_previous area, and can be accessed by loading the module 8.1_previous. Please see the documentation directory within the 8.1 release for any Intel-notified differences in this update.

19th October 2004

MPT change: During the maintenance session the default version of the MPT library (for MPI and SHMEM applications) on newton was changed to a more recent version - v1.10. This version contains minor performance upgrades to collective routines as well as some increased functionality. Please report any problems with this new version to the helpdesk. Users who do encounter problems are advised to try going back to the previous default as follows: module switch sgi-mpt-1.10 sgi-mpt-1.8.1

19th October 2004

Intel Compilers: Following the switch of the interactive node from newt64i to newtd, all compilers are now on the newest release available. These newer releases have fixes for several bugs, some notified by CSAR clients, and should be better than the older versions previously available on newt64i.

A more detailed list of the compiler versions is available on Newton by typing news Compilers. As previously, the latest release of a compiler will always be loadable by the modulefile with _latest in its name. We will also now be making available the immediately previous version of the compiler, loadable by the modulefile with _previous in its name. All other modulefiles are older versions kept for specific individual code needs.

6th August 2004

Intel Compiler module names: The modulefiles have been updated and as a result the old intel-compilers_7.1 and intel-compilers_8.0 have been removed from all Newton nodes. The latest modules are now called intel-compilers_7.1_latest and intel-compilers_8.0_latest.

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