UWC Astrophysics Compute Clusters

 

The UWC Astrophysics group hosts two high-performance distributed-memory clusters, housed at UWC's Data Research Centre in ICS.

 

Timon has  4 nodes and Pumba has 19 nodes, where

each node consists of:

• 48 2.8 GHz Opteron cores

• 256 GB DDR-1600 RAM

• 6 3TB Seagate SAS drives

Each cluster has a front end server with an SSD, and the nodes are connected via 10GB ethernet.  The node drives are configured into a globally-accessible redundant 133 TB array.  The cluster is connected externally via SANREN which provides high-speed connectivity amongst South African research universities & centres.  The hostname is astroclust.uwc.ac.za (only accessible from a machine within UWC).

 

Usage

 

Pumba is exclusively for the use of the astrophysics group.  Timon is additionally made available to select external groups.  Contact Romeel Davé if you would like access.  Note that Peter van Heusden manages the cluster only part-time, so there is little sysadmin service; we cannot install new software, help debug, etc. -- you must roll your own.

 

Queue submission is done via Torque, based on PBS.  Timon's queue is called testq, Pumba's is mainq.  Be sure to submit to the proper queue!

Documentation:

• qsub:  Command to submit jobs

• qstat, qdel, and other management commands

• Sample batch script (save and rename to submit.sh)

 

Sample files for Romeel's group's Gizmo simulations (save & rename as listed): 

• Gizmo param (m25n256.param) and config file (Config.sh)

• MUSIC IC conf file (ics_g25n256.conf)

 

 

CHPC

 

The Centre for High Performance Computing (also in Cape Town) hosts world-class computing facilities.  CET members work closely with the astrophysics group based at CHPC led by former UWC professor Catherine Cress, and thus have special access to CHPC machines in collaboration with the CHPC astro group.