What's New?
11/03/09: NCCS is increasing the core limits on the general_hi and general queues on discover 11/04/09 Noon.
NCCS is increasing the core limits on the general_hi and general queues on discover.
----------
general_hi
----------
resources_max.ncpus = 3072
-------
general
-------
resources_max.ncpus = 1024
resources_min.ncpus = 17
09/09/09: The NCCS's Secure Unattended Proxy (SUP) service is unavailable
The NCCS's SUP service is unavailable following the movement of the Data Management Facility (DMF) to the new hardware platform on September 13, 2009. Please contact the NCCS User Services Group if you need to use SUP functionality with NCCS systems. Please note that this change does not affect SUP services provided by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at the NASA Ames Research Center.
08/24/09: NASA Expands High-End Computing System for Climate Simulation
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center made available to scientists in August the first unit of an expanded high-end computing system that will serve as the centerpiece of a new climate simulation capability.
08/13/09: Discover SCU5 is now available on August, 13, 2009.
SCU5 is now available for use by the Discover user community through the normal queue structure. In addition, any users wishing to explicitly request SCU5 nodes can do so via the use of proc=neha (in the select portion of the PBS qsub command).
07/28/09: Transition of NCCS Userids to Agency Userids on August 19, 2009.
The NCCS is transitioning its userids to match the NASA agency Userids (AUID). This change will only affect 251 NCCS Users. If you have not been contacted, this transition will not affect you. For those being transitioned, your password and RSA SecurID token will not be affected.
The planned date for this change is August 19th.
Prior to this change, it is highly suggested that you review scripts or
programs that you may have developed and ensure that they do not use a
hard-coded userid.
Using the $USER, $HOME and $ARCHIVE variables is highly recommended as a best
practice. For example:
mv file /home/jdoe1
would be better written as:
mv file $HOME
The NCCS will handle most aspects of the change (e.g. renaming home and archive
directories, crontabs, etc.), but please be aware that userid changes are
inherently complicated and unforseen issues may arise.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the
NCCS User Services Group by e-mail at support@nccs.nasa.gov or by telephone at 301-286-9120.
07/28/09: Simulations Enable Successful Hubble Navigation Experiment
Months-long simulations at NCCS produced thousands of images that were critical for planning and testing the Hubble Relative Navigation Sensor Experiment.
07/15/09: Now Available: High-End Computing at NASA 2007 - 2008
This new report features science and engineering highlights from across NASA's mission directorates and updates about the HEC Program's facilities and services.
05/19/09: NCCS Plays Important Role in Recent Shuttle Mission
Computations performed by NASA GSFC engineers on the NCCS Discover cluster played an important role in the recent shuttle mission.
The two images seen here are of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the image on the right was taken during Servicing Mission 4 (SM4) during Flight Day 3 (May 13, 2009), and the image to the left was rendered many months prior to launch using the Discover cluster. The NCCS computing facilities were used to generate a suite of test images of HST in support of the Relative Navigation Sensor (RNS) Experiment being flown on-board the Shuttle Atlantis as part of STS-125, launched on May 11, 2009 at 2:01 pm EST. In particular, the images were used to develop the Goddard Natural Feature Image Recognition (GNFIR) algorithm, which estimates a 3D pose (position & orientation) from a 2D image for autonomous navigation, rendezvous and docking. The imagery was used to verify the GNFIR feature set and test the acquisition and tracking pose performance. The image on the right was taken at a range of approximately 90 meters using the far range camera of the RNS system, recorded and processed on-board by the GNFIR algorithm running on the Goddard advanced avionics system, SpaceCube.
05/15/09: Presentation on Application Performance Monitoring and Analysis on Discover
The NCCS User Services Group will be giving a presentation on the use of a variety of performance monitoring and analysis tools installed on the Discover cluster. This presentation will be from noon to 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 21, 2009 in Building 28, Room S216.
Abstract:
Several new tools have recently been made available on the Discover cluster to help users analyze their source code and monitor application resource usage on a per core and per node basis. This presentation will cover the use of the static Fortran source code analyzer, 'ftnchek', and annotate source code for cache access statistics with 'cachegrind'. The discussion will include the use of tools for monitoring MPI behavior and system resource usage over the duration of application run time.
WebEx Info
Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009
Presenter: Tyler A. Simon
Time: 12:00 pm, Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -04:00, New York)
Meeting Number: 929 548 151
Meeting Password: NCCSusg1!
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To start the online meeting
-------------------------------------------------------
Go to https://nasa.webex.com/nasa/j.php
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Teleconference information
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1-866-903-3877
Participant: 6684167
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04/29/09: ACTION REQUIRED for all dirac Users
In a general e-mail message sent February 10, 2009, the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) announced the impending decommissioning of the $NOBACKUP directories on dirac by May 1, 2009. That date has been extended to May 31, 2009. Dirac users, who haven't already done so, should move the research work and files in their /explore/home and /explore/nobackup directories to the Data Analysis Nodes (dali) on the discover Cluster.
Remove the files you no longer need. Move files that you do need to $NOBACKUP on discover. Only if necessary should you move them to the tape archive. Roughly 174 TB of files currently reside in the /explore/nobackup directories, so please do not automatically archive everything to tape.
If you do not have access to the Data Analysis Nodes (dali) on the discover Cluster, you will need to contact the NCCS User Services Group at 301-286-9120. If the NCCS User Services Group can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail at support@nccs.nasa.gov or by telephone at 301-286-9120.
04/29/09: Intel Developer Tools Training
The NCCS is hosting an Intel Developer Tools Training Class for users involved in code development on our Discover cluster. Use of Intel compilers and library tools will be explained. It will be held on May 7, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Building 28, Room E210 and May 8, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Building 28, Room W230F. Members of the Intel Technical Staff will provide the instruction.
04/28/09: Discover Team is upgrading all internal Ethernet switches
In preparation for the upcoming SCU5 installation, the Discover Team is upgrading all internal Ethernet switches associated with the Scali nodes. This upgrade will be performed in as non-disruptive a manner as possible by employing a rolling replacement approach, limiting impact to 40 Discover nodes at a time. The switch replacement effort is expected to take place between April 29 and May 15.
Please contact the NCCS User Services Group at support@nccs.nasa.gov or 301-286-9120 with any questions.
04/24/09: Completion of DataPortal Service Migration
We are pleased to announce that the thing[1-4] hosts which previously provided DataPortal Services have been decomissioned in favor of utilizing our new, much more powerful HP BladeCenter hosts. To most of our end users, this change has been made transparent by re-directing commonly utilized aliases (such as wms.gsfc.nasa.gov or map.nasa.gov) to address the new blades instead of the old thingX servers. Please use logical references to access DataPortal resources wherever possible. For example, if you previously explicitly addressed 'thing3.gsfc.nasa.gov', then you should utilize 'dataportal.nccs.nasa.gov' instead. This is a newly created round-robin alias that we will be able to preserve through future upgrades.
Below is a list of DataPortal services that were transitioned from old to new servers.
| Service |
PreviousHost |
CurrentHost |
|---|
| SHELL ACCESS |
thing[1-4] |
dataportal.nccs.nasa.gov |
| ftp.nccs.nasa.gov |
thing3 |
dp[3,4] |
| wms.gsfc.nasa.gov |
thing1 |
dp5 |
| map.nasa.gov |
thing1 |
dp5 |
| portal.nccs.nasa.gov |
thing1 |
dp5 |
| wmsdev.gsfc.nasa.gov |
thing2 |
dp6 |
| wwwdev.map.nasa.gov |
thing2 |
dp6 |
| wmsdev.gsfc.nasa.gov |
thing2 |
dp6 |
| opendap.nccs.nasa.gov |
thing4 |
dp8 |
04/14/09: Applications and Performance Class
The NCCS hosted an Applications and Performance Class for users involved in code development on our Discover cluster. It was held on April 22, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Building 28, Room S216 and April 23, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Building 28, Room W230F. Our instructor was Koushik K. Ghosh, Ph.D., HPC Technical Specialist, IBM Federal.
03/01/09: ACTION REQUIRED for all NCCS Users
On Wednesday, March 11, 2009 the NCCS RSA SecurID operations will be merged with the Goddard ITCD RSA SecurID operations in Code 700. This change will clear your NCCS PIN. For instructions to be followed ...
01/30/09: NCCS User Forums Scheduled for 2009
The NCCS has scheduled User Forums for 2009 on the following Tuesdays: 24 March, 23 June (Postponed), 22 September, and 8 December, 2:00-3:30 p.m. in Building 33, Room H114. Light refreshments will be served. For additional information, or to suggest an agenda item, contact the NCCS User Services Group at 301-286-9120.
01/03/09: Science Time Requests Due March 20
The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) will select from requests submitted to the e-Books online system by March 20 for 1-year allocation awards to begin on May 1. Any current projects set to expire on April 30 must have a request in e-Books to be considered for renewal. If allocation additions are needed for current projects or immediate allocations are needed for new projects contact
Sally Stemwedel (301 286-5049,
or Support for assistance.
09/30/08: Palm/Explore is no longer in service
After almost three years of dedicated service to the NCCS user community, the Palm/Explore cluster has been decommissioned on September 30, 2008 and will be replaced with a new system.
07/25/08: NCCS Offering Parallel MATLAB on Discover Cluster
The NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) is offering a parallel version of MATLAB to its user community for evaluation. The software runs on the Discover computing cluster and is accessed through a special queue
MATLAB is an interactive programming environment for developing algorithms, analyzing and visualizing data, and managing projects. Perhaps the preeminent software tool of its kind, more than one million scientists and engineers in 175 countries are currently using MATLAB.
07/24/08: NASA Study: Cell Processor Shows Promise for Climate Modeling
In a feasibility study funded by NASA's HEC Program, the IBM Cell Broadband Engine significantly outperformed conventional processor cores.
07/21/08: Seminar Announcement: Parallel Computing in MATLAB (8/1, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m, Bld 26/Room 205)
This session will show you how to perform parallel computing in MATLAB using either your desktop machine or a computer cluster.
07/09/08: Upgrade Operating System on the Discover cluster from SLES-9 to SLES-10.
The NCCS has upgraded the operating system on the Discover cluster from SLES-9 to SLES-10 on July 10, 2008.
05/15/08: User Forum Slides available
Slides (PDF/PPT) are available for NCCS users from Quarterly User Forum Meeting.(05/15/08)
05/05/08: Seminar Series Announcement: Fortran 2003 (5/6, 12pm, 28/E210)
Software Integration & Visualization Office (SIVO) Fortran 2003 Seminar Series
02/14/08: NASA Debuts New High-End Computing Website
NASA's High-End Computing Program has officially launched
its new website, which provides information about the program's
mission, accomplishments, computing systems, and support services.
The website serves as a gateway to the agency's two premier
supercomputing facilities.
02/07/08: Upcoming User Forum
February 14th from 1:30 to 3:30 in Building 28, room S121.
The NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) and the Software
Integration and Visualization Office (SIVO) are pleased to announce an
open house to showcase some of the services available to NASA's research
community. The open house will be held next Thursday, the 14th of
February from 1:30-3:00pm in the SIVO Scientific Visualization Studio in
building 28, room S121.
The NCCS will highlight some of its compute, archive and service
capabilities; all of which are available to researchers who are
supported by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The SIVO team will
discuss service offerings in the areas of visualization and analysis as
well as their work done in support of scientific applications and the
modeling community.
The open house will also include a demonstration of the Scientific
Visualization Studio as well as tours of the NCCS compute and storage
facility. Team members from both organizations will be on hand to
assist with any questions concerning both current and future use of
these services. The beginning portion of this forum will also be made
available to remote users via webcast and telecon. Details can be found
at http://www.nccs.nasa.gov/user_forum.html
01/14/08: Seminar Series Announcement: Fortran 2003 SIVO is pleased to begin a new biweekly series of seminars on the
new Fortran 2003 (F2003) standard beginning in January 2008. The
F2003 standard is a major update to the Fortran standard it includes
a wide variety of new capabilities of relevance to our community.
Many of these features are now available in virtually all recent
releases of Fortran compilers with others only available from the
more progressive vendors. The content of this series will emphasize
relevance of new features to scientific modeling and best practices
for the use of these new features to ensure clean, portable
software. With the exception of the first session which will be a
general introduction to the new Fortran standard, each subsequent
session will cover a separate subset of the new features in an
informal brown-bag format. The attendees are encouraged to
participate in the form of questions, discussions and
recommendations. SIVO will also maintain a web-based discussion area
for these topics.
The first session will be on Tuesday, January 29 at 2:00 PM in B28-E210.
Click here to see listing of classes.
10/25/07: Reset LDAP Password online The NCCS User Services Group has developed a tool to provide users
a convenient way to change their LDAP password online. You can find a
link to the LDAP password changing utility from the NCCS website under Quick Links or
Click here.
09/25/07: Allocation proposals are due September 26th For all computational
projects that are due to end Sept 30th or those that are new for October
1st. Click here.
09/17/07: Slides (PPT) are available for NCCS users from Quarterly User Forum Meeting. (09/13/2007) Click here.
09/10/07: Upcoming User Forum
September 13th from 1:30 to 3:30 in Building 33, room H114. The User Forum is a quarterly meeting designed to facilitate dialogue with the NCCS users. Click here to see agenda.
08/06/07: High-End Computing at NASA: An Interview with Tsengdar Lee and Phil Webster. The leaders of the High-End Computing (HEC) Program and CISTO express their views on HEC.s role within NASA and the impact of IT industry trends on computational science and engineering.Read More.
05/01/07: Halem system is now being retired
After almost five years of dedicated service to NCCS community, the halem system is now being decommissioned. As you may know, the Halem system has been without maintenance for over a year. Starting May 1st, this system will no longer be supported. What this
means to the user is that if the system should fail, there will be no attempt
made to recover it. In addition, any disk or licenses which can be used on the
new discover system will be removed without warning. The system will remain
available in this state for a few additional weeks, at which point logins will
be disabled and the system decommissioned.
Users are welcome to continue to use the Halem system under these conditions as
long as it is up and running, just please ensure any data created is
immediately moved to another location.
04/30/07: Slides (PDF/PPT) are available for NCCS users from Quarterly User Forum Meeting. (04/27/2007) Click here.
04/20/07: Upcoming User Forum
April 26th from 1:30 to 3:30 in Building 33, room H114.
The User Forum is a quarterly meeting designed to facilitate dialogue with the NCCS users. Click here to see agenda.
03/26/07: March 30, 2007 Deadline for moving /nobackup data.
The NCCS is pleased to announce the availability of a new scratch space
for the explore (Altix) environment. This new scratch space comes in the
form of new nobackup filesystems (these filesystems are not backed up by
the system staff). These new filesystems provide expanded space, better
performance and a new pathname scheme that will help differentiate between
other nobackup filesystems on the other compute environments here at the
NCCS. These filesystems are available on all of the Altix systems as well
as on dirac (via CXFS).
Users of the explore environment and dirac can access these scratch areas
via the following path:
/explore/nobackup/
or via the environment variable:
$NOBACKUP
01/23/07: Slides (PDF/PPT) are available for NCCS users from Quarterly User Forum Meeting (1/12/2007).
Click here.
01/02/07: Slides for the Discover training class are available for NCCS users
Click here to see the slides.
12/01/06: Upcoming User Forum
January 12th from 1:30 to 3:30 in Building 33, room H114.
The User Forum is a quarterly meeting designed to facilitate dialogue with the NCCS users. Click here to see agenda.
11/07/06: NASA's High-End Computing Report for 2006 Now Available
The inaugural report from NASA's newly established High-End Computing (HEC) Program captures remarkable science and engineering accomplishments enabled by the HEC Program's shared high-end computing systems and services. (PDF-8.3MB) Please click here for more info.
11/07/06: NASA Seeks Proposals for Leadership Computing Allocations
For the second year, the NASA is seeking proposals for large-scale computing allocations to support cutting-edge, computationally intensive science and engineering of national interest under the National Leadership Computing System (NLCS) initiative. Please click here for more info.
11/03/06: NASA Science and Engineering Achievements to Be Featured
Some of NASA's most spectacular science and engineering achievements enabled by the agency's high-end computing resources will be showcased at Supercomputing 2006 (SC06), the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis at Tampa's Convention Center, Nov. 11-17, 2006. Please click here for more info.
09/15/06: The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is now accepting allocations for fiscal year of 2007. Submissions are due before October 4th, 2006.Please click here for more info.
09/01/06: The list of projects running on NCCS is organized by the sponsoring mission directorate or initiative, then by project title in alphabetical order of principal investigator. Please click here for more info.
06/12/06: Weekly User Teleconference, Tuesdays at 1:30pm EST. The purpose of the weekly User Teleconference is to discuss current issues, provide updates to the user community and to answer questions. Please click here for more info.
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