Overview of the PPPL Cluster

The PPPL Cluster consists of several sub-clusters.

Users login to the cluster through a pool of systems called portal.pppl.gov. On portal, users test programs, stage their jobs, submit their jobs, and do other interactive tasks. Users log into portal.pppl.gov using their PPPL Unix accounts. To get an account, send email to lscimeca@pppl.gov.

The following clusters run users' jobs:

The kestrel subcluster has 240+ nodes with AMD Opteron CPUs and a 1Gb ethernet network.
The kite subcluster has 24 two CPU systems connected via 10Gb Infiniband.
The sque cluster has ~60 systems exclusively used for single CPU jobs.
The ganesh cluster has 8 systems with 4 cpus and large memory size (16-32GB of RAM per system).
The kruskal cluster has 80 systems with 8 cpus and a large memory size (16GB of RAM per system), linked via a 20Gb Infiniband interconnect.
The stix system is an SMP system with 80 cpus and 440GB of memory, all addressable by a single OS instance (useful for large models/programs).

The PPPL cluster also offers interactive processing services. Users can use the use command on portal to reserve one or more systems for their exclusive use.

Home and project directories are served by very high speed UNIX fileservers which are responsible for storage and backup of files.