Experiment Machines and Usage Instructions
Please direct your questions to the TA about using the experimental machines.
There are several groups of machines you may use for assignments/project in this
course. Note that some of these machines are also used by others in the
department, so it is important to be courteous and follow the policies (when
applicable) while using them.
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node2x12x1a
This machine has two CPU chips (or sockets), each containing 12 cores. So the
machine includes 24 processors in total. This machine will be primarily by
students in this class. Please be courteous to your fellow students. In
particular, please try to limit the duration of your tests involving many
processors if others are also using the machine. Please make sure that your
program does not hang in the machine when you are not actively working.
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node4x2a
This machine has four CPU chips (or sockets), each containing two cores, each
further containing two hardware hyperthreads. So the machine includes 16
processors in total. This machine is sometimes used by others in the systems
research group. Please be particularly courteous to others using the machine.
And pay particular attention to avoid leaving hanging processes in the machine
when you are not actively working.
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cycle2/cycle3
Each of the two machines has 24 processors. We are not certain about its
processor topology (chips/sockets, cores, and hyperthreads) and we encourage
you to find it out yourself by reading /proc/cpuinfo
.
These machines are not only used by some for computation, but also as a login
gateway by some running interactive shells. So please be most courteous
while using them.
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node17, node18, ..., node28
Each of these machines has two CPU chips (or sockets), each containing two
hardware hyperthreads. So each machine includes four processors in total.
These machines are not as heavily used as other machines but they are also
relatively slow. We will use them when we need an array of identical machines
for distributed parallelism.
Some of these nodes might appear to be off-line;
if you discover this is the case, use alternative nodes.
We do not recommend you to use them in the threads-based assignment.
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Department computational cluster
The department also maintains a computation cluster with a significant
amount of resources (including some newest multicore machines). You can
find information about using them at
cluster usage page.
You must follow the stated policies while using
the cluster resources.
And note that this cluster can be crowded at times, particular when
approaching certain conference deadlines.