32 Core Machines

In July, 2010 the Computer Science department purchased two 32-core machines as part of an NSF grant to bring parallelism to undergraduate CS education. These are managed individually, and are currently referred to as thing1 and thing2, or collectively as the things.

Connecting to the Things
Regular users cannot physically use the machines, but remote access is available. Please contact bw-root@stolaf.edu to receive an account on the things. Once an account is acquired, users can connect via SSH (note: thing1 and thing2 are currently behind the helios network, so users must connect to helios before connecting to the things):

$ ssh helios.public.stolaf.edu $ ssh {thing1,thing2}

Passwordless SSH
It is useful to have passwordless SSH setup between the things. This can be achieved quickly:

$ ssh thing1

# Now on thing1 $ ssh-keygen -t dsa $ scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub thing2:~ $ ssh thing2

# Now on thing2 $ cat id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys $ rm -f ~/id_dsa.pub $ ssh-keygen -t dsa $ scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub thing1:~ $ exit

# Now on thing1 $ cat id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys $ rm -f ~/id_dsa.pub

Hardware
For future reference, here is a list of the major hardware components of each thing:
 * Processor: AMD Opteron 6128 (Socket G34) Magny-Cours 2.0GHz [8 cores] [x4] [305.99 per unit]
 * Motherboard: A+ H8QG6-F Motherboard 4-Way Opteron 6100 Socket G34 [x1] [923.00 per unit]


 * Memory: Kingston 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1333 [x24] [130.99 per unit]
 * Hard Drive: HITACHI Ultrastar 600GB 15000 RPM SAS [x2] [499.99 per unit]
 * DVD Drive: LITE-ON Black 24X CD/DVD+-RW [x1] [23.99 per unit]
 * Chassis (Case): Supermicro SC748TQ-R1200B Tower/4U Chassis [x1] [815.00 per unit]
 * Dynatron A6 77mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler [x4] [34.99 per unit]

Notes:
 * A specialized chassis was required due to the enormous size of the motherboard. This is because we needed a quad-socket motherboard, and not many were available. We also required at least one PCI-Express x16 slot, which further limited our choices. The result is that each computer is around the size of two full towers. One major benefit to this is that the chassis was build with our specific motherboard in mind, making installation easy. It also came pre-loaded with a large number of hot-swappable fans and two hot-swappable power supplies.
 * The processors did not come with any stock coolers, so we had to select a 3rd party product. Finding these was actually somewhat difficult since at the time the Magny-Cours line was brand new.
 * SAS = Serial Attached SCSI

Infiniband
A proposal for Infiniband was recently approved, so these computers will soon be outfitted with QDR IB cards. (Wiki note: When this happens, we will likely need a page documenting how to use IB)

Software/Development Support
The things support X-forwarding, and currently have gedit, emacs, nano, and vi.

If you need a specific library or software package installed, please contact bw-root@stolaf.edu and include a rationale for your request.