Software Overview

If you are reading this document then it is assumed that you did not purchase any commercial software for handling and scheduling jobs on your machine. In this case we have installed the SCore (pronounced ``ess core'') parallel runtime environment originally developed by the Real World Computing Partnership (RWCP) located in Tsukuba Japan, and now managed by the PCCLUSTER Consortium. SCore is freely downloadable (including source code). The aim of the 10 year SCore project has been to produce a seamless parallel environment, in which a user logs onto the front end server and uses the parallel computing resource as if it where a single system. As well as producing system software the RWCP team have also produced MPI drivers for Myrinet, Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and other hardware. The SCore Myrinet and Shared Memory interfaces to MPI are acknowledged as some of the most efficient available today. The SCore system is used in some of the largest Myrinet PC clusters at European universities. For example the Kepler cluster at the University of Tuebingen (196 cpu)

http://kepler.sfb382-zdv.uni-tuebingen.de/start.shtml

and the Parnass2 cluster at the University of Bonn (144 cpu)

http://wissrech.iam.uni-bonn.de/research/projects/parnass2/

and more recently the HELICS cluster at the University of Heidelberg. HELICS is a 512 cpu AMD Athlon based cluster linked by Myrinet 2000.

http://www.helics.org