1. CLAN A High Performance, Dual Operating System Compute Server Based on Intel Processors Kathy Benninger John Kochmar Mike Levine Juan Leon Paul Nowoczynski J. Ray Scott Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

2. Agenda History/Background Design Issues Prototype Software Production Cluster Research Areas

3. The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Past — One of four NSF-funded centers in the “Centers” program Present — –Active in providing high-end cycles for science research –Advancing Computational Science –Education

4. PSC, continued Organizational unit of Carnegie Mellon University Joint operation by CMU, University of Pittsburgh, and Westinghouse Electric Company www.psc.edu

5. PSC Partners Department of Energy National Institutes of Health NIST National Science Foundation State of Pennsylvania Industrial Affiliates

6. PSC Workstation Cluster History 1988 - VAX 2000 1992 - Cluster –Digital MIPS-based workstations 1994 - SuperCluster –Digital Alpha-based workstations

7. Intel Project History Spring, 1997 Intel Technology for Education 2000 Grant Microsoft Support Prototype Hardware, 1998 Production Hardware, 1999

8. Design Issues SMP vs Single CPU Quad vs Dual Linux vs NT –Why pick!! Management –emphasize build replication –NT Screen-centric design Interconnect - VIA Spec on the horizon First study the enemy. Seek weakness. -- Romulan Commander, stardate 1709.2

9. Prototype Dual Boot Replication MPI Early Demonstrations Scientist Development Systems

10. Madness has no purpose. Or reason. But it may have a goal. -- Spock, stardate 3088.7 Software Base System –NT 4.0 –Linux RH 5.2 Kernel 2.2.2 Language Support –Digital Visual Fortran (NT) –MS Visual C/C++ (NT) File system –NFS –SAMBA

11. Software, cont Message Passing –MPI –PVM –NT threads Scheduler –Compaq Batch Scheduler –PBS –(more at the end…)

12. Management Software Installation Replication Configuration Control User Administration Verification –snmp / Java applet Remote Management Conquest is easy. Control is not. -- Kirk

13. SNMP Applet

14. Production Cluster Hardware Delivered January 1999 Installation in Mellon Institute Building We Klingons believe as you do -- the sick should die. Only the strong should live.

15. Cluster Hardware Detail Quad 400MHz Pentium II Xeon Processor 512KB L2 cache 1GB memory One 18GB disk Rackmounted cases, 7 PCI slots: 4 64-bit, 3 32-bit Dell Remote Assistant card version 2.0 14/32X SCSI CD-ROM Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B PCI fast Ethernet LAN card (RAID SCSI adapter -- not fully utilized yet)

16. Cluster Hardware Detail (cont’d) Redundant hot swap power supply Redundant hot swap cooling and CPU fans 17" monitor Keyboard with integrated trackball and buttons Two cascaded 8-port APEX PC Solutions KVM switches Intel Fast Ethernet switch

18. Production Cluster Architecture

19. A little suffering is good for the soul. -- Kirk, stardate 1514.0 Users Yang Wang - LSMS John Urbanic - Performance Mike Kopko - Sloan Sky Search Marcela Madrid - Amber Dave Yaron - Organic Displays Nick Nystrom - Games Westinghouse CNFD

20. Early Performance

21. Research Areas Scheduling in mixed OS environment –“mpi” aware scheduling –PBS port to NT –CBS Sentinel –Genius –not LSF Usage Accounting –scheduling support Interconnect –Giganet

22. Data Issues –Database/Data Mining –Shared File System –Parallel File System Middleware –Java –CORBA –Agents/aglets Research Areas, cont. Oracle 8i ?

23. Plans (Run-Away Train) National Institutes of Health Biomedical Cluster Workshop June 1999 40 more CPU’s –quads?

24. Thank you!