ARSC T3D Users' Newsletter 52, September 15, 1995

T3E to be Displayed at the Alaska CUG

Yesterday on the unicos-l@cug.org news reflector there was an announcement about the T3E: 


  **** ANNOUNCEMENT - T3E MACHINE AT CUG ALASKA ****
  
  There will be a real air cooled T3E machine with a 4
  processor module installed, on display at the CUG
  meeting in Alaska. This will be quite a show-and-tell
  event available for viewing late Thursday September
  28 and Friday September 29.
  
  Please spread the word!!!
  --
  
  Joan Palm - CUG Office/Cray Research Inc.
  Conference Planning
  655 A Lone Oak Drive
  Eagan, MN 55121
  Phone: 612-683-3522
  Fax: 612-683-3599
  Internet: Joan.palm.cray.com

New Charging Algorithm at ARSC

As of October 1st, 1995 ARSC will be changing its algorithm for calculating Service Units (SUs). The current algorithm is: 


    1.000*Y-MP(CPU-hours)
  + 0.050*T3D(CPU-hours)
  + 0.005*Memory(MWord-hours)
  + 0.003*your Denali files(GByte-hours)
    ------------------------
  = total SU's
The new algorithm as of October 1st is: 


    1.000*Y-MP(CPU-hours)
  + 0.010*T3D(CPU-hours)
  + 0.005*Memory(MWord-hours)
  + 0.003*your Denali files(GByte-hours)
    ------------------------
  = total SU's
The only change is the charge for using the ARSC T3D: 

  from:  
0.050
*T3D(CPU-hours)
    to:  
0.010
*T3D(CPU-hours)
This reflects a depreciation of T3D time in line with our attempts to boost T3D utilization. It brings our valuations in line with other T3D sites and advertises our wish to become a production site for T3D applications. If you have questions about this change contact Mike Ess.

Changes with the 1.2 PE

The man pages specific to the MPP machine are available with the commands: 


   man 1m cf77
   man 1m cft77
   man 1m f90
These man pages list which flags are specific to the PVP machine and are no longer supported on the MPP machine. For example, the -astatic flag is no longer supported on cft77 for the MPP.

The End of an Interactive Session

At ARSC, by default, all interactive sessions are limited to one hour of connect time to the T3D. This prevents run-away jobs and encourages users to use the NQS batch queues. Recently, a couple of users have exceeded this one hour of connect time and have not been able to continue their work on the T3D. Two typical examples are shown below: 


example 1:


  make cf771
    /mpp/bin/cf77 -dp -c ep28.f
    /mpp/bin/cf77 -dp -c second.f
    /mpp/bin/mppldr ep28.o second.o -o epcf77
    epcf77

  ...

  CPU limit exceeded
  Beginning of Traceback (PE 0):
    Started from address 0x2000000318 in routine 'EMBAR'.
    Called from line 270 (address 0x200000336c) in routine '$START$'.
  End of Traceback.
  Make: "epcf77" terminated due to signal 26


example 2:


  make cf771
    /mpp/bin/cf77 -dp -c ep28.f
    /mpp/bin/cf77 -dp -c second.f
    /mpp/bin/mppldr ep28.o second.o -o epcf77
    epcf77
  mppexec: Could not allocate 2 PE partition
  Agent internal perror: ioctl: Unknown error
  Make: "epcf77": Error code 1
In example 1, the make executed a T3D program called "epcf77"; this program exceeded the 1 hour of connect time and produced the error message: 

  CPU limit exceeded
In example 2, make tries the same command but now the T3D program produces the error message: 

  mppexec: Could not allocate 2 PE partition
  Agent internal perror: ioctl: Unknown error
  Make: "epcf77": Error code 1
which in this case means that all of the connect time for this interactive session has been used up.

The solution to this situation is to log out and then log back in or use the NQS queues.

List of Differences Between T3D and Y-MP

The current list of differences between the T3D and the Y-MP is:
  1. Data type sizes are not the same (Newsletter #5)
  2. Uninitialized variables are different (Newsletter #6)
  3. The effect of the -a static compiler switch (Newsletter #7)
  4. There is no GETENV on the T3D (Newsletter #8)
  5. Missing routine SMACH on T3D (Newsletter #9)
  6. Different Arithmetics (Newsletter #9)
  7. Different clock granularities for gettimeofday (Newsletter #11)
  8. Restrictions on record length for direct I/O files (Newsletter #19)
  9. Implied DO loop is not "vectorized" on the T3D (Newsletter #20)
  10. Missing Linpack and Eispack routines in libsci (Newsletter #25)
  11. F90 manual for Y-MP, no manual for T3D (Newsletter #31)
  12. RANF() and its manpage differ between machines (Newsletter #37)
  13. CRAY2IEG is available only on the Y-MP (Newsletter #40)
  14. Missing sort routines on the T3D (Newsletter #41)
  15. Missing compiler allocation flags (Newsletter #52)
I encourage users to e-mail in differences that they have found, so we all can benefit from each other's experience.
Current Editors:
Ed Kornkven ARSC HPC Specialist ph: 907-450-8669
Kate Hedstrom ARSC Oceanographic Specialist ph: 907-450-8678
Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
PO Box 756020
Fairbanks AK 99775-6020
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