This is the June 2003 newsletter of the ITC Research Computing Support Group. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the information presented here, please contact the ITC Research Computing Support Group via e-mail to res-consult@virginia.edu, or at the Research Computing Support Center (RCSC), 244 Wilson Hall, 243-8800. The RCSC is open 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday.
| Please note: The RCSC will be closed on Friday, July 4, 2003, for the University holiday. The Center will reopen on Monday, July 7, 2003. |
In order to ensure a quick response to a number of issues that are emerging with computers connected to the U.Va. network, the University is asking - and will soon be requiring - you to register your computer. This simple process can be completed in a few minutes.
Please go to https://www.web.virginia.edu/microsys/register and follow the instructions.
Please register the computer(s) you normally use at your desk on Grounds. If you are registering a laptop computer, please connect to the Ethernet using a cable and disable your wireless card during the process by either pulling it out or turning it off.
You will need an account on Blue Unix, Home Directory, CMS, or HSC Exchange to register your system. (If you do not have a login and password on one of these services, there is no need to register your computer at this time.)
If you have any questions, please call the ITC Help Desk at 4-3731.
ITC is pleased to announce the availability of its newest High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC), Birch (birch.itc). Birch complements the Aspen Linux cluster (aspen.itc) already available to researchers. The new HPCC consists of 32 compute nodes plus a frontend node; each node has two 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon processors and 2GB of memory. The cluster boasts a fast, low-latency Myrinet interconnect for use by MPI (message-passing interface) parallel jobs, in addition to a Gigabit Ethernet interconnect. The system also provides 200GB of scratch disk space (/bigtmp) on the frontend for temporary storage.
All nodes run Red Hat Linux 7.3. The cluster is a batch-processing system; jobs are submitted from the frontend, birch.itc, to the PBSPro 5.2 resource manager for execution upon the compute nodes.
The system is configured similarly to the existing Aspen cluster. Users' home directories are mounted to it, and most of the research software licensed at the University is available on it. Any research-enabled account is automatically valid on the Birch cluster. New users can find information about obtaining a research account at http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/hpc-account. Information about using the new Birch Linux cluster is available at http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/linux-cluster/birch.
The acquisition of Birch is another step in fulfilling the key recommendations of the University Research Computing Task Force (http://www.itc.Virginia.EDU/rctf/) and its faculty ad hoc sub-committee on High Performance Computing. In particular, with its specialized Myrinet interconnect, Birch is primarily intended to provide a platform for high-performance parallel computing. The existing Aspen cluster (http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/linux-cluster/aspen) is the appropriate system for most serial jobs, or for some parallel jobs that do not benefit from the high-speed, low-latency interconnect provided by Myrinet.
Because its primary mission is to support parallel computing, Birch will be configured to favor such jobs. Initially, we will restrict users to a maximum of 8 jobs at a time so as to keep nodes available for parallel jobs. We intend to monitor this policy and reserve the right to make changes to the scheduling policies and/or the queue configuration in order to maintain a preference for parallel computing jobs while maximizing utilization of the cluster.
Questions regarding either High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) should be addressed to the Research Computing Support Center by telephoning 243-8800 or e-mailing res-consult@Virginia.EDU.
Faculty members who have obtained standalone copies of Mathematica for home-use will need to renew their passwords to insure that Mathematica continues to operate on their computers. The licenses for these standalone copies expires on June 10 of each year.
Faculty will need to use the license number that came with their Mathematica CD as well as the MathID generated by Mathematica for their computer to generate a new password on the Wolfram Web page at http://www.wolfram.com/services/.
Further information about standalone copies of Mathematica for faculty home-use can be found at http://www.itc.Virginia.EDU/research/mathematica/#avail.
Specific questions about Mathematica password renewal as well as general questions regarding Mathematica should be directed to res-consult@virginia.edu.
LISREL, PRELIS, and MultiLevel (structural equation modeling software from SSI) have been upgraded on node1, node2 and node3 of the Blue Unix Cluster.
LISREL (LInear Structural RELations) is a structural equation modelling program from Scientific Software International (SSI). According to SSI, LISREL and PRELIS "are the most advanced programs available for analysis of large linear systems when both dependent and independent variables are subject to error, and/or when qualitative variables are included in the analysis. The programs also perform path analysis, multiple indicator-multiple criterion analysis, recursive and nonrecursive modeling of temporal data, confirmatory factor analysis, and analysis of covariance structures."
MULTILEV fits Linear and Nonlinear Multilevel models to raw data. The raw data are processed from a Prelis System File (PSF) which in turn is generated from ASCII data files by using PRELIS. Multilevel syntax files are ASCII files which have the same extension (.PR2) as PRELIS syntax files.
On nodes 1, 2 or 3 of blue.unix, the lisrel command now invokes version 8.53 of lisrel. The command, prelis, invokes Prelis 2.53, and multilev starts multilev 5.30.
Lisrel 8.54 and Prelis 2.54 for Windows are available in all of the ITC Public Computing facilities.
Details about Lisrel availability and information about use and support are available on the ITCWeb Research Computing Support Lisrel Web page at: http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/lisrel/.
Please direct any questions regarding SSI products at U.Va. to Research Computing Support by phone at 243-8800 or by email to res-consult@Virginia.EDU.
Users of ArcView 8.3 and ArcInfo 8.3 should download and install ESRI's ArcGIS Desktop 8.3 Service Pack 2. This Service Pack contains several improvements and maintenance fixes as well as all the fixes from ArcGIS 8.3 Service Pack 1.1. Installation instructions are available at the download site: http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=downloads.patchesServicePacks.viewPatch&PID=43&MetaID=548
Please direct any questions regarding ESRI/GIS products at U.Va. to Research Computing Support by phone at 243-8800 or by email to res-consult@Virginia.EDU.
In many branches of science and engineering, presentation software—usually Microsoft's PowerPoint—has become a popular tool for the delivery of research talks. Increasingly, such software is also being used in teaching.
An article in SIAM News describes a LaTeX document class that allows the creation of computer-based presentations in LaTeX called PROSPER. Since LaTeX is the standard word processing software for scientific publications, PROSPER allows a relatively easy way to create presentations from publication source code. The article can be found at http://www.siam.org/siamnews/12-01/prosper.pdf.
If you'll be leaving the University this summer here are a few housekeeping tips for wrapping up computer accounts, data, and site-licensed software:
Software you got from the ITC Research Computing Support Center (RCSC)
such as SPSS, SAS, Matlab, or Mathematica require an additional step beyond
deleting if off your hard drive. You must also notify ITC that you're leaving
U.Va. and have removed the software from your computer and destroyed the
installation CDs or returned them to the RCSC in 244 Wilson. The easiest
way to notify ITC that you've removed the software is to go to the ITC software
licensing/registration database at
http://web.virginia.edu/rescomp/
On May 19th, ITC began the transition to fee-based printing in the ITC public computing facilities, including the Unix labs. The fee-based system is managed by U.Va. Printing & Copying Services (PCS).
The Small PC Lab, the Small Unix Lab, and the room E225 Unix Lab were transitioned earlier in June. The HP B/W printer (small_l1) and the Tektronix color printer (small_c1) in 102 Small Hall Unix Lab have been removed due to low print volume. In order to print from the Sun and SGI workstations in 102 Small Hall, you have to print to the queue "small3822." Output now goes to the printer in the ITC Small Hall PC lab, in Room 112 of Small Hall. Users of the Sun and SGI workstations can also print to all Unix print queues previously available that were not in ITC Labs.
If working in E225 Thornton UnixLab, the print queue there is "thorn3823." Output can be retrieved in Room E225 Thornton. The PCS printer is in the same place as was the old ITC HP B/W printer.
Print queues in any ITC lab are now part of the PCS Pay-for-Print. When using these PCS printers, go to the print server next to the printer and follow the directions displayed there to select your job, swipe your Cavalier Advantage or student ID card and print the job. PCS plans to put signs on all the monitors very soon listing these steps.
For more information on fee-based printing, please visit http://www.virginia.edu/uvaprint/laserprinting/plp.htm.
Waterloo Maple continues to conduct free Web demonstrations of Maple T.A., their upcoming product for creating online Maple-graded exams and assignments. All you need to participate is a Web browser and a telephone. Seminars on Maplets Programming and Maple in Mathematics Education will also be hosted throughout the spring.
To view the current schedule and to register for a session, visit the website at https://maplesoft.webex.com/. All you require is a Web browser, an Internet connection, and a telephone to participate. Visit often to see if new training sessions have been added to our schedule. If you are new to Web seminars and would rather attend a session conducted by Research Computing, please contact us by e-mailing res-consult@virginia.edu
The Third Annual ESRI Education User Conference will be held in San Diego, California, July 6-9, 2003. For details visit the website at http://www.esri.com/events/educ/.
In coordination with the Education User Conference, the ESRI International Users Conference will be held July 7-11, 2003 in San Diego, California. Preconference seminars and special events will take place on Saturday, July 5, and Sunday, July 6, 2003. Detailed information on conference events and registration information is on the Web at http://www.esri.com/events/uc/.
The Ninth ACM SIGKDD
International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining will take place
August 24 - 27, 2003 in Washington, DC. KDD is the leading international conference
on knowledge discovery and data mining, and provides a forum for academic researchers
and industry and government practitioners to share their research and experience.
It will feature keynote presentations, oral paper presentations, poster presentations,
workshops, tutorials, and panels, as well as the KDD Cup competition. For conference
details, visit http://www.acm.org/sigkdd/kdd2003/.
Now is the time to encourage your colleagues and students to join us and learn
about research computing support at U.Va. We only send out an e-mail once or twice
a month to this maillist. Anyone can subscribe to this "itc-research"
maillist by sending an e-mail to: majordomo@virginia.edu
with these two lines:
subscribe itc-research
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