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MPC

High Performance Computing Cluster

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Data Center

OIT has been providing cooperative cluster computing services to UCI researchers for many years.  Comprising at various times MPC (“Medium Performance Computing”), BDUC (“Broadcom Distributed and Unified Cluster”), and even Green Planet (a cluster hosted for the School of Physical Sciences), the service continues to evolve as technology changes.

With the support of Southern California Edison’s Strategic Energy Program (SEP) which offers grants to replace older computers with new, energy-efficient systems (something of a “cash for clunkers” for computers), along with contributions from the Office of Research, OIT has been able to upgrade some of the components of the shared-use computing cluster and has rechristened it HPC (“High Performance Computing.”)  Further upgrades will take place over the coming year.

With MPC, individual researchers could add computing nodes to the cluster with the understanding that, in exchange for OIT providing environment and security, 25% of the computing capacity would be made available to the UCI research community.  In contrast, HPC uses advanced queuing and scheduling techniques developed by HPC system administrator Joseph Farran.  These techniques dynamically allow unused capacity in a given researcher’s segment of the cluster to be made available to others.  This results in a sustained use of over 90% of the massive computational capacity of the cluster.  Researchers interested in participating in HPC should contact Joseph Farran at x4-5551.

Technical specifications of the upgraded nodes include:

  • 64-core AMD CPUs providing an aggregate of over 2000 cores
  • 8 Nvidia GPUs (4 Tesla, 4 Fermi)
  • 8.8TB RAM
  • QDR Infiniband inter-node communication channel
  • 500TB storage in a Gluster distributed filesystem
  • GridEngine scheduler via 18 private/group queues and 9 free queues
  • CUDA development tools
  • licensed software including SAS, STATA, CLCBio, MATLAB, Mathematica
  • GNU, Intel and PGC compilers and Eclipse and Totalview debuggers

Cluster Computing

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NACS hosts and manages the Middle Performance Computing (MPC) “Beowulf” Cluster on behalf of campus researchers who need substantial computational power.

MPC comprises private nodes and shared nodes, including a part-time shared cluster using NACS PC lab systems. MPC systems feature a mix of architectures to provide high computational throughput.

A feature of the MPC service is the opportunity for researchers to join their own systems to the cluster. In exchange for system administration, housing, and 24/7 oversight provided by NACS, researchers allow 25% of their systems to be configured as part of a campus computational resource. (The remaining 75% is configured to be a cluster, or “queue”, dedicated to the owner.) Contributors may, of course, make use of systems designated for campus use.

Contributors also become voting members of the MPC Advisory Board. The purpose of the MPCAB is to advise NACS on the governance, policies, procedures, and technical aspects of the MPC cluster.

Researchers may request accounts on MPC (and other NACS resources) online. Any future changes that impact MPC users will be posted on the MPC website.

NACS also hosts the GradEA Beowulf Cluster for the exclusive use of UCI graduate students.

MPC web site:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/mpc/

MPC account requests:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/rcs/resources.html

GradEA web site:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/gradea/