Updated August 19, 2009
The School of Computing and Information Sciences has a 14 node cluster available for students and researchers. Each node is a Pentium 4 2GHz with 2GB of memory, and is a standard SCIS UNIX host from a user perspective. The only difference is that LAM/MPI is set up so that distributed processing can be performed.
LAM (Local Area Multicomputer) is an MPI programming environment and development system for heterogeneous computers on a network. With LAM, a dedicated cluster or an existing network computing infrastructure can act as one parallel computer solving one problem.
LAM features extensive debugging support in the application development cycle and peak performance for production applications. LAM features a full implementation of the MPI communication standard.
In the distant past, the Starscream cluster used a different home directory than normal SCIS UNIX hosts. In the interest of simplicity, it is no longer set up this way. Your home directory is now the same as all other SCIS UNIX hosts.
All SCIS Graduate students that have standard UNIX accounts will also be able to log into the cluster.
If you don't have an SCIS UNIX account, speak to your professor or advisor so that one may be created for you.
You can log into the cluster the same way you log into other UNIX systems; use the hostname "starscream.cs.fiu.edu". The nodes are numbered sequentially in the form s-node01, s-node02, s-node03 and so on.
A special script runs periodically that checks which nodes are up, and writes this list into the /etc/lam/lam-bhost.def file. This is used by LAM and can also optionally be used by your own scripts to see which nodes are available.
If you have any issues with the system, feel free to contact us at request@cs.fiu.edu.
