***NCSA Integrates New Linux Cluster Software into OSCAR***
CHAMPAIGN, IL, June 16, 2003NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) has integrated four popular software packages used on Linux clusters into the OSCAR toolkit. The work means this software can be automatically installed, configured and enabled as part of the OSCAR installation process in building high-performance Linux clusters.
OSCAR, or Open Source Cluster Application Resources, is a cluster software stack that simplifies the process of configuring and maintaining a Linux cluster. It is developed by the Open Cluster Group, a nationwide research collaboration dedicated to making cluster computing practical for high-performance computing. The new software packages can be downloaded using the OSCAR Package Downloader (OPD) utility during the install process of OSCAR 2.2.1.
Following are details on the software.
Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS) 1.5.7
Platforms: IA32, IA64
http://www.parl.clemson.edu/pvfs/index.html
PVFS is a parallel file system that was developed to address the disparity between I/O performance and processor performance, which leads to I/O bottlenecks in many applications, especially those using large data sets. PVFS serves as both a platform for parallel I/O research and a production file system for the cluster-computing community.
PVFS is a joint project of the Parallel Architecture Research Laboratory at Clemson University and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. Additional funding comes from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the National Computational Science Alliance through the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for
Advanced Computational Infrastructure program.
CluMon 1.2.1
Platforms: IA32
http://clumon.ncsa.uiuc.edu/
Clumon is a cluster monitoring system developed at NCSA to keep track of its Linux
superclusters. It is a tunable system that works with almost any set of Linux machines.
GM 1.6.4 (GM 2.0rc experimental support)
Platforms: IA32, IA64
http://www.myricom.com/
The GM system, produced by Myricom, is a low-level message passing system for Myrinet networks. It includes a driver, Myrinet-interface control program, a network mapping program, and the GM API, library, and header files. GM features include:
* Concurrent, protected, user-level access to the Myrinet interface
* Reliable, ordered delivery of messages
* Automatic mapping and route computation
* Automatic recovery from transient network problems
* Scalability to thousands of nodes
* Low latency, high data rate, and very low host-CPU utilization
* Extensible software to allow simultaneous direct support of the GM
API, IP (TCP, UDP), MPI, and other APIs
* Support for IP (TCP, UDP) over GM is included in most GM distributions
MPICH-GM
Platforms: IA32, IA64
http://www.myricom.com/
MPICH is a portable implementation of MPI, the Message Passing Interface standard. Developed by Argonne National Laboratory, MPICH is designed to be highly portable and is used by a large number of providers of MPI implementations. MPICHoften runs using TCP/IP over Ethernet. In order to exploit the lower latency and higher data rates of Myrinet networks, Myricom developed MPICH-GM as a port of MPICH to be used with the Myrinet GM system.
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NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) is a national high-performance computing center that develops and deploys cutting-edge computing, networking and information technologies. Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is funded by the National Science Foundation. Additional support comes from the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, private sector partners and other federal agencies. For more information, see http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.
For more on OSCAR, see the OSCAR project homepage: http://oscar.sourceforge.net.
The Open Cluster Group includes members from Bald Guy Software, Dell, IBM, Indiana University, Intel, MSC.Software, NCSA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For more information, see http://www.openclustergroup.org/.
Karen Green
Associate Director, Public Affairs
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
605 E. Springfield Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820
Ph: 217-265-0748 Mobile: 217-649-5631
Fax: 217-244-7396
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu
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