Numerically Intensive Computing

Academic and Research Computing (ARC) provides a parallel cluster that is dedicated to numerically-intensive research computing.

A new batch cluster is under construction.

You can apply for access by completing the on-line NIC Services Access Request Form . You will be notified by e-mail when access is approved, and you must then wait 24 hours (necessary for password propagation) before attempting to use the service.

The service can be used interactively for program development, debugging, and production runs. The cluster participates in the campus AFS file system, and you access it using your RCS username and password.

For help in using the service, send email to nic-support-l@lists.rpi.edu.

More information about numerically-intensive computing at Rensselaer and in general can be found at the following web sites.

RPI NIC Files
NPAC MPI Conversion Info
Guide to Mathematics Resources (including software)
Computational Science Education Project (on-line instruction in computational science)
Guide to Available Math Software

The parallel cluster

The parallel cluster is intended primarily for parallel research calculations, with or without message passing. Message passing is provided by MPICH, a public-domain version of the Message Passing Interface library, over 100 Mb/sec ethernet connections between the machines. The parallel cluster consists of 8 PCs each with two 863 MHz Pentium-3 processors, 256 MB of RAM, and approximately 1.7 GB of local temporary disk space. These machines run Red Hat Linux 7.0.

In addition to the local temporary disk space, the cluster has a shared scratch pool in /colony/scratch1 containing approximately 17 GB.

The landing pad for interactive use of the parallel cluster is miata.nic.rpi.edu

Please send comments and suggestions about this web page to nic-support-l@lists.rpi.edu.

Last modified: April 2, 2009