High Performance Computing Center (HPCC) - Michigan State University

The High Performance Computing Center provided tours on Thursday April 24, 2008 to support Take Your Child to Work Day. While tours were approximately 30 minutes the children, ages 8 to14, accompanied by an adult, were given a great opportunity to view the inside of the machine room.

Again this year visitors were not only able to step inside the HPCC machine room to see, hear and feel what a high performance machine room really consists of but were also given the opportunity to interact with staff.

Visiting the MSU High Performance Computing Center was a new experience for all the visitors and the difference between the hot and cold aisles, as well as the size of the cabling caused a few mouths to drop open. Although not necessarily part of HPCC, visitors were able to see and touch the inside of a couple broken computers. Something HPCC staff does often in our jobs but again something very new to our guests.

As interested as everyone was in the machines in the room, visitors were also interested in talking with HPCC staff members. Many, many great questions were asked during the tours. Whether it was actually addressing questions relating to the specific types of research being done, whether a machine identical to ours could be bought at a store or what type of degree we, as staff, have we tried to be as helpful as possible.

As always, Take Your Child To Work Day is one of the many ways that Michigan State University is supporting students of tomorrow today. It is with the sincerest hope that seeing the most powerful overall computer at Michigan State University made a difference in the day of a child visiting, possibly leading to a future career.

A few photos were taken during the morning tour

The maximum number of CPUs a user can request on the clusters has been increased from 128 to 144. Staff will continue to monitor and evaluate the maximum number CPUs that need to be available.

After careful consideration, an acceptable use policy has been created for the HPCC and is viewable at the following URL: http://www.hpcc.msu.edu/users/acceptable-use-of-hpcc-computing-resources/

The High Performance Computing Center needs to gather the following information for continuation of the REF grant from principal investigators:

* any publications done during the year that used the HPCC
* grants in-force or grants submitted that would use the HPCC

It is important to gather this information as it is used to continue the funding of the center through MSU. HPCC has created a Wiki where information can be entered by any user.

Once at the Wiki

1. Select the PI name you are entering pub/grant info for
2. Click on the ‘Edit Grants and Publication Data’
3. Log into the wiki using your HPC name and password (only needs to be done once per session)
4. Drop text into the pub/grant box
5. Click on ‘Save’ at the bottom

Please submit this information by March 16th as the report is due. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Bill Punch, punch@msu.edu.

Michigan State University High Performance Computing Center is currently #43 on the Green500 List.

The purpose of this list is to provide a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world and serve as a complementary view to the TOP500 List.

For more information see Green500 List website

A forum for HPCC users has been created. This will be of benefit to the MSU high performance computing community. User will find communicating with each other regarding any and all HPCC related issues much easier. Please login today.

Introduction to HPCC

Friday, January 11, 2008, 8:30am-12:00pm

210 Computer Center

Registration: Please contact Kelly Robertson (kellyrob@msu.edu) by 5:00pm January 4 2008. This seminar is limited to 20 participants.

Preparation: Please have a HPCC account prior to attending the workshop.

The following topics will be covered in this workshop:

• Setting up your computer (Installing Putty, Installing WinSCP3^? or other SCP client)
• Accessing your account (Using SSH)
• Structure of HPC (SMP vs. Cluster)
• User Environment (Directory Structure, Navigating (cd, ls), Creating Directories, Basic Commands - more, screen, top, ps, cat, others as needed)
• Transferring Files
• Compiling
• Testing
• Shell Scripts
• Submitting a Job (Queues)
• Monitoring (qstat, Job Output, Error Output)
• Advanced Job Properties (Requesting Nodes)

This workshop will be taught by LCTTP staff.

HPCC is offering a 2 day seminar to help users learn MPI programming.

Learn more…

April 26, 2007 was Take Your Child to Work Day at Michigan State University. The High Performance Computing Center hosted tours during the 30 minute time slots made available in the morning. HPCC provided boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 14 the opportunity to actually experience the high performance computing center machine room, see the inside of a computer and interact with staff.

Visitors were able to step inside the HPCC machine room in order to see, hear and feel what a high performance machine room really consists of. After seeing the machines, most were surprised at what they actually saw. The expectations were for much bigger machines. The noise level didn’t catch visitors off guard but the difference between the warm and cold aisles did raise a few eyebrows.

As an added bonus for visitors, HPCC just happened to have a computer that was not functional for operation. This provided us with the perfect opportunity to take the computer apart, allowing the children to see the inside. Something the children had not seen before.

Last but not least, a portion of the staff were present to answer any and all questions. Whether it was actually addressing questions relating to the machines in the room, the power needed to run them or what type of degree we, as staff, have and from what school it was obtained we tried to be as helpful as possible. In the end we even instructed a parent on how to obtain an account to help further his research.

In conclusion, Take Your Child To Work Day is one of the many ways that Michigan State University is supporting students of tomorrow today. It is with the sincerest hope that seeing the most powerful overall computer at Michigan State University made a difference in the day of a child visiting, possibly leading to a future career.

Following are a few pictures of our morning