ARC Resources
Advanced Research Computing offers a wide range of resources to Virginia Tech researchers and collaborators, listed below. Click on a link to read more about a given resource.
High-Performance Computing
| Name | BlueRidge | HokieSpeed | HokieOne | Athena | Ithaca | Dante |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor/Model | Appro GreenBlade | Seneca (CPU-GPU) | SGI UV-1000 | Appro (CPU-GPU) | IBM iDataPlex | Dell R815 |
| Key Features, Uses | Large-scale computation | Large-scale GPU or CPU computation | Shared Memory | GPU computing & visualization | High memory nodes, MATLAB queue | Scratch pad |
| Login Node (xxx.arc.vt.edu) | blueridge1 or blueridge2 | hokiespeed1 or hokiespeed2 | hokieone | athena1 | ithaca | dante |
| Available | March 2013 | September 2012 | April 2012 | March 2011 | Fall 2009 | |
| Operating System | CentOS Linux 6 | CentOS Linux 6 | SUSE Linux 11 | CentOS Linux 5 | SUSE Linux 11 | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 |
| Theoretical CPU Peak (TeraFlops) | 105.8 | 23.5 | 5.4 | 12.4 | 6.1 | - |
| Nodes | 318 | 204 | N/A | 42 | 84 | 1 |
| Cores | 5,088 | 2,448 | 492 | 1,344 | 672 | 32 |
| Cores/Node | 16 | 12 | N/A* | 32 | 8 | 32 |
| CPU Model | Intel Sandy Bridge | Intel Westmere | Intel Westmere | AMD Magny Cour | Intel Nehalem | AMD Opteron |
| CPU Speed | 2.60 GHz | 2.40 GHz | 2.66 GHz | 2.30 GHz | 2.26 GHz | 2.30 GHz |
| GPUs | N/A | 408 | N/A | 32 | N/A | N/A |
| GPU Model | N/A | NVIDIA Tesla C2050 | N/A | NVIDIA Tesla S2050 | N/A | N/A |
| GPUs/Node | N/A | 2 | N/A | 2* | N/A | N/A |
| Memory Size | 20.4 TB | 5.0 TB | 2.62 TB | 2.7 TB | 2 TB | 64 GB |
| Memory/Core | 4 GB* | 2 GB | 5.3 GB | 2 GB | 3 GB* | 2 GB |
| Memory/Node | 64 GB* | 24 GB | N/A* | 64 GB | 24 GB* | 64 GB |
| Interconnect | QDR InfiniBand | QDR InfiniBand | QDR InfiniBand | QDR InfiniBand | QDR InfiniBand | N/A |
| Notes | Requires Allocation *5 nodes have 128 GB (8 GB/core) | Available only to HokieSpeed PIs/Co-PIs | *6 cores & 32 GB per socket (when requesting resources) | *For 16-node GPU queue | *10 nodes have 48 GB (6 GB/core) | No Scheduler |
Visualization
- The Visionarium offers a variety of visualization resources, including a three-dimensional high-definition visualization cube, a six-monitor tiled array, two stereo walls, and more. The Visionarium maintains a YouTube channel to highlight interesting work being done on these systems.
- The Athena cluster offers remote batch and interactive cluster-based rendering and visualization.
Software
ARC provides user guides for the following software packages:
- Unix: A detailed guide to the Unix operating system
- OpenMP: An introduction to OpenMP, a common means of obtaining parallelism on shared-memory systems
- MPI: An introduction to Message Passing Interface (MPI), a standard for obtaining parallelism, particularly on distributed-memory systems.
- MATLAB: An introduction to MATLAB numerical computing software with instructions for and examples of submitting jobs to Ithaca
- NAMD: An introduction to NAMD molecular dynamics software, including information on running, scaling, and GPU acceleration
The table below describes the availability of select (but not all) software packages on ARC systems:
| Software | Description | BlueRidge | HokieSpeed | HokieOne | Athena | Ithaca | Dante |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABAQUS | Finite Element | 6.12-1 | 6.11-2 | 6.10-2, 6.10-EF1 | 6.10-2, 6.10-EF1, 6.9-2 | 6.10-2, 6.10-EF1 | |
| ANSYS | Fluid Dynamics | 14.5 | 14.0 | 13.0.0, 12.1.4, 12.0.16 | |||
| Gaussian | Computational Chemistry | 09.A-02 | 09.A-02 | 09.A-02 | |||
| Gromacs | Molecular Dynamics | 4.5.5 | 4.5.5 | 4.5.5 | |||
| LAMMPS | Molecular Dynamics | 27Aug12 | 27Aug12 | 27Aug12 | |||
| LS-DYNA | Finite Element | v971 Rev 5 & 6 (MPP & SMP) | |||||
| MATLAB | Numerical Computing | R2010b, R2011b, R2012a | R2009a, R2009b, R2010a, R2010b, R2011a, R2011b, R2012a | R2010b, R2011b, R2012a | |||
| NAMD | Molecular Dynamics | 2.9 | 2.8 | 2.8 | 2.7 | 2.7 | |
| OpenFOAM | Fluid Dynamics | 2.2.0, 2.1.1 | 2.2.0, 2.1.1 | 2.1.1 | 2.0.1 | ||
| ParaView | Visualization | 3.14.1 | 3.14.1, 3.8.1 | 3.8.1 | |||
| PETSc | Partial Differential Equation | 3.1-p8 | |||||
| R | Statistics | 2.14.1 | 2.14.1 | 2.14.1 | 2.11.0 | 2.10 | |
| SAS | Statistics | 9.2 | |||||
| STAR-CCM | Fluid Dynamics | 5.02.009_01, 4.06.011_01 | |||||
| VASP | Ab initio Simulation | 5.3.3 | 5.2.11 |