UMBC SGI Challenge-XL (HyDRA)
Account Form
I. Introduction and Overview.
UMBC has acquired a Silicon Graphics (SGI) Challenge-XL system to aide faculty in research. This machine, named HyDRA, presently has 16-R4400 based processors (120mips/40Mflops each), 1000MB of Ram, and 15 Gigabytes of high speed disk storage. This machine is linked to other UMBC computing resources via a 100MB FDDI network interface and a separate ethernet interface. HyDRA is intended for large-scale computational problems previously requiring SuperComputer access. This machine is intended to run research-related problems that are computational demanding or require memory or disk resources unavailable on the other Unix systems. This machine is NOT intended as a general purpose computing machine where faculty or graduate students log in and perform tasks such as Electronic Mail, news, or other basic services commonly available on other Unix systems, such as UMBC8 or UMBC7.
While accounts on many UMBC machines are open to all faculty and graduate students, accounts on HyDRA require the attached application be completed and reviewed by a campus committee. In addition, faculty must estimate the resources required and request that amount in the application. Accounts are not permanently granted and faculty will need to re-apply every six months to keep their account.
II. Who is Eligible for an Account.
Only full-time and adjunct UMBC faculty member may apply for an account on HyDRA. Faculty may designate additional sub-accounts be created for graduate students or other personnel assisting them in their research. However, the faculty member requesting the account is considered the Principal Investigator (PI) for the account and all resources used by the designated sub-account holders will count towards the resources used by the PI. This is a departure from what has previously been done. For example, the PI will be given a fixed amount of disk space with each account. That space must be allocated among all sub-account holders. In addition, the PI is resposnible for the usage generated by each sub-account holder.
III. How to Apply for an Account.
This form is available via the campus Gopher server under /ACS Information and Services/Getting a HyDRA Account. Fill out thebottom part and send this to hydra_acct@umbc.edu. The account request will automatically be sent to all members of the review committee. Under normal circumstances you will be notified of the committee's decision within five business days of submitting your request.You may be asked to use an alternate computer if the need for access to HyDRA does not seem necessary. Of course, you may resubmit any request turned down, providing additional justification or responding to comments raised in the rejection letter. All faculty will be eligible for an account on UMBC7, a single processor machine of similar performance to HyDRA.
Please note that this peer review is intended to assist faculty not hinder them. It also provides ACS with sufficient information to properly manage this rather complex parallel computer in a timely manner that will be to the benefit of all. The membership of the faculty review committee will be approved by the Faculty Senate Computer Policy Committee. It is expected that the review committee members will have extensive experience in research computing and be committed to maximizing the benefit of HyDRA to faculty research.
IV. Notes on Completing the Form.
Section A. provides basic demographic information used to assist ACS in tracking your account once it is approved.
Section B. requests that you list any external financial support for this project. This is useful in showing that the project has undergone the peer review process used by funding agencies. External support is not a pre-requisit to receiving an account on HyDRA.
Section C. requests that you list the estimated CPU time required for this project, the amount of RAM memory you will require, and the amount of DISK resources you will require. In addition, if you intend to run a single job over multiple CPU's you should describe how this will be done. As an estimate on the amount of CPU time required it is requested that faculty make a sample run on a local workstation or UMBC7 to get a time estimate. See section IV for a summary of resource limitations. For more information on how to estimate your account usage contact systems@umbc.edu.
Section D. Is a short (<2 page) summary of your research and the reason why an account on HyDRA would be beneficial to that research.
V. Resource Limitations for Faculty Using HyDRA.
While HyDRA is a powerful machine it would be very easy for an individual faculty member to monopolize resources in a way that renders the machine useless to others. To facilitate fair usage HyDRA offers a batch queueing system named NQS. Each faculty member who receives an account will receive a HyDRA Users Guide explaining how to use the batch queues. Since HyDRA is a shared resource, users will be required to adhere to the following guidelines.
1. Each PI will be given 25 Megabytes of disk space for permanent storage on HyDRA. Faculty may rent additional disk space at a cost of $1/MB per each 6 months(minimum rental is 25 MB) . This space increase will last until the account must be renewed. Faculty interested in acquiring a complete disk drive for there own use may contact Jack Suess for purchase information. ACS will consider NFS mounting files from a faculty members own computer if it can be shown that will not have a negative impact on the campus network.
2. Faculty should submit all jobs to the appropriate batch queue. Unless a job requires constant interactive input or is used in the context of scientific visualization it should be submitted to a batch queue for processing. Failure to submit jobs to the appropriate batch queues could result in the loss of account privileges.
3. Higher priority batch queues are available to faculty on a chargeback basis. Each PI will be limited to running no more than four (4) high priority jobs at one time. Faculty who wish to use this mechanism will be charged a one-time fee of $500 and $1/CPU hour for all CPU time used over 500 hours. This fee must be renewed each time the account is renewed. Monies received from chargeback queues are used to provide enhancements to HyDRA.
4. Some jobs require large amounts of RAM. The maximum amount of RAM that a single PI is allowed to use on one job is 300MB of RAM. The total amount of memory allowed to be used by all jobs run from a group is 400MB.
5. No job may be parallelized to use more than 8 CPU'S.
The following rationale was used to determine the CPU charges to use. A new workstation remains close to state-of-the-artfor 2-3 years. A lower bound on HyDRA cpu charges should have some rough correspondance to the costs associated with running similar codes on a faculty-owned workstation. There are approximately 9000 hours/year. A faculty-owned workstation running production jobs that run close to 100% of the time will then use up 18,000 to 27,000 hours over the lifetime of the machine. If HyDRA users are charged $1/cpu hour, their HyDRA costs over 2-3 years will be in the same ballpark as the cost of a workstation ($15,000 - $25,000)with the same performance, although with less memory.
There are other considerable advantages to using HyDRA over a workstation, fast I/O, large memory, and multiple cpu's for quick turn around. The other choice faculty have for gaining access to high--end compute servers is the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Faculty wishing to receive information on applying for an account at SDSC or PSC should send mail to jack suess, jack@umbc.edu.
HyDRA ACCOUNT FORM
Section A. Primary Investigator Identification
Name (Last, First, Middle):
Social Security Number:
Department:
Building Address:
Phone:
Electronic Mail Address:
Application Type ( Select either Renewal or New request):
Section B. Sources of Financial Support
Sponsoring Agency/Institution:
Award Number:
Start Date:
Expiration Date:
Section C. Resource Requirements
Estimated CPU usage per job:
Estimated Total CPU usage per Six Months:
Estimated DISK Space Required:
Estimated Memory usage per Job.
Are you interested in renting additional disk space?
If so, how much?
Section D. Summary of Research.
Please describe why access to HyDRA is needed. If this is a renewal state what results have been achieved. Please list all publications you have submitted on the basis of your computational work on HyDRA.
Section E. Additional Accounts Needed .
For each person you would like to have receive a HyDRA account complete the following information. All accounts associated with a PI will exist in the same group. Each account will share in the total allocation of Disk Space granted to the PI.
Last Name:
First Name:
SSN:
UMBC7 Account Name (if applicable):
Email Address:
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