COTS Hardware Platform(Commercial Off-The-Shelf)

Boris JeremicDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering

University of California, Davis

MRCCS/NSF Summer School

High Performance Computing in Finite Element Analysis

1st - 5th September 2003,

University of Manchester

Supported in part by the NSF, PEER, Caltrans, and Cal–EPA.

Collaborators: Professors Mike Kleeman (UCD), Drs. Francis McKenna (UCB), and graduate

and undergraduate students Ritu Jain (UCD), Guanzhou Jie (UCD), Mark Olton (UCD), Kevin

Murakoshi (UCD).

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Motivation

• In house parallel platform for learning, development, production

runs

• Inexpensive (save 30% per box compared to a commercial PC,

save 60commercial PC cluster)

• Maintenance (hardware, software) takes time (money)

• It’s fun and students love to be able to break it and fix it

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Parallel Computer System

• Computer performance steadily increase – Price decreasing

• Beowulf parallel computer systems: off–the–shelf PC components

• Performance comparable to commercial supercomputers

• Available in every networked computer environment (PCs, Macs,

UNIX)

• GeoWulf at UC Davis (+ CML cluster + FatCat cluster)

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EthernetFastSwitch

40 portsco

mpu

ter

serv

ice

com

pute

rco

ntro

ller

com

pute

rco

ntro

ller console

outside world Internet

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GeoWulf

• 2 Controller computers: dual AMD 2400 machine with 2GB RAM

and 50 and 70GB disk space (recent upgrade)

• Service machine (large disk space (IDE) for backups, can do work

as well...)

• Node computers (heterogeneous):

– 8 x single PIII 400 machines with 128MB RAM and 7GB disks

– 8 x single AMD 600 machines with 128MB RAM and 9GB disks

• Connection: fast Ethernet switch (100T, HP ProCurve 4000).

• Cost: < $500 per node + $50 per switched port + $3500 per

controller

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GeoWulf

• In house assembly

• space issues

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GeoWulf: Maintenance

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GeoWulf: Space Problem

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Commercial Alternative

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Summary

• It is worth the effort

• Source code compatible with large DMP machines (can be used

for large scale runs)

• If funding permits, go for packaged deals (scyld, linux networx...)

• Always save some funds to build couple machines in house (for fun

and to show students that there is nothing special about piece of

hardware...)

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References

[1] Sterling, T. L., Salmon, J., Becker, D. J., and Savarese, D. F. How to Build a Beowulf: A Guideto the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters. Scientific and Engineering Computations Series. The MITPress, 1999. ISBN 0-262-69218-X ; QA 76.58.S854 1998.

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