Physics and Astronomy Computing Services - PACS

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High Performance Computing:

A critical piece to research in the fields of Physics and Astronomy, the practice of high performance computing covers the spectrum from developing software for petaflop supercomputers to getting the greatest performance from desktops. The PACS team supports the efforts of researchers through software and hardware.
Software Development and Toolkits:

Intel Compilers and Libraries - PACS is currently evaluating the Intel suite of compilers, develop tools, and libraries. This includes C++, Fortran, MKL, VTune, and ThreadChecker. For more information, consult this site (coming soon.)
RedHat Enterprise 4 Suite - PACS maintains RedHat Enterprise Linux for Physics and Astronomy. This comes with the standard set of tools including GCC, G77, Perl, Python, and more. Please email PACS support if you are interested in having RedHat installed on your desktop.


Hardware Resources:

Clusters - PACS, with support from other staff and students, manage several cluster resources within the department. Astronomy, INT, and Physics all have dedicated DELL clusters (ranging from 16 CPUs to 512CPUs). In addition, all three organizations maintain Condor clusters to utilize their desktops as compute nodes 24 by 7.
The Athena cluster, a 10TF supercomputer is the result of a collaboration between the Institute for Nuclear Theory, the Department of Astronomy, and the Department of Physics. For more information on access to Athena, please visit the Athena wiki.
Filesystems - Astronomy is currently pioneering the adoption of high-performance, clustered file systems in their facility. PACS plans to migrate these types of technologies into both INT and Physics soon.


Mailing Lists and Classes:

PACS-CODERS - PACS is moderating an email list called pacs-coders.This is a discussion list to air ideas, tricks, and tips; initially dealing with multi-core programming and cluster computing. Follow this link if you're interested in subscribing to this list.
Undergraduate Seminar on Advanced Computing - PACS is planning on tag-teaming an advanced computing seminar in Fall 2007. This will be targeted to undergraduate students wishing to become more familar with Linux, software development, and compilers. More news soon!


More Information:

eScience Initiative Cluster (coming soon) Distributed File System Technology
Astronomy's STF Cluster
Physics' STF Condor Cluster

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