On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Lingling Tang wrote: > Our group obtained some computing allocation (30,000SUs) from TeraGrid, > and we would like to install MPB (and MEEP) on it. The computers have > different architecture and operating system, and we are trying to find > suitable ones for installing MPB (and MEEP). Does anyone have > experiences in installing MPB in TeraGrid? Is there any recommended > architecture and OS for MPB (and MEEP) installation?
TeraGrid, as you point out, is the name for a loosely connected set of several different supercomputers. We have installed MPB (and Meep) on several of these supercomputers (at NCSA and PSC, most recently), but the installation difficulty varies with the operating system. The easiest computers to install on are the ones that use GNU/Linux on both the front-ends and the compute nodes, ideally with x86 processors since that is where the software (and compilers) are best tested. Among the newer systems, you might look into NCSA's "Abe" Intel 64 Linux cluster. The hardest computers to install on are the ones, like the Cray XT3, that use a different operating system on the front-end and compute nodes, so that you have to use a cross-compiler and can't test the binaries interactively. We've installed Meep and MPB on the XT3, but it took some time because we had to cross-compile a whole bunch of stuff, hack Guile a bit to get it to compile, statically link everything (since the compute nodes don't support shared libraries), and jump through similar hoops. I really hope that the supercomputer vendors like Cray and IBM (whose BlueGene/L system has the same insanity) will get the hint and drop this "custom microkernel on the compute nodes" garbage. Steven _______________________________________________ mpb-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://ab-initio.mit.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mpb-discuss
