High Performance Computing
IDL experience with High Performance Computing (HPC) start in the early 2000, using message passing interface (MPI) and portable batch system (PBS). IDL applications include numerical weather prediction, global and regional climate modelling, ocean modelling and geodynamics. All these activities are carried out by the different research groups within IDL. Despite having access to several HPC infrastutures via collaborative projects and computing time, IDL also has it's own HPC infrastutures.
EQUIPMENT
The first HPC system in IDL (VORTEX) was established on 2005, and was since retired, the system included 16 computers with 80 cores in total.
In 2011, the institute built a second system (TORNADO) necessary to run the EC-Earth Global Earth System Model, this system still in operation today, has 20 computers totaling 200 cores. In 2015, a third system (NIMBUS) was installed, which is essential for the new needs of high-resoluting dynamical downscaling of climate fields, for seasonal, decadal predictability and climate scenario studies, for the simulation of atmosphere-ocean coastal processes and geodynamics. Nimbus still in operation, has 30 computer nodes and a total of 584 cores. In 2020 due to the continuing increase of the different models complexity and the increase of users of the HPC systems, the group build a new system (VORTEX), today the system has 41 computer nodes and a total of 1312 cores.
The current HPC systems operating have the following details:
90 Computer with 2096 Cores in 3 HPC systems (with different intel architectures)
Over 8 Tb RAM (from 32G to 128G per computer)
Over 1.3 Pb of storage (local computer storage and NAS systems)
Different networks cards (1Gb, 10Gb, 25Gb and Infiniband)
INTEL & GNU compilers including INTEL MPI
CentOS/CentOS Stream Linux with Slurm for managing and scheduling