IN THIS MESSAGE

  • Center Announcements
    • OLCF User Documentation is Moving
    • New Requirement for ALCC Proposals
    • 2019 OLCF User Survey is Now Available
    • Python 2 End of Life; Transition to Python 3
    • Process Limits on Summit Login Nodes
    • Preemptable Queue on Summit
    • HIP is Available on Summit
  • Meetings & Workshops
    • OLCF User Conference Call (Sep 25)
  • Upcoming Scheduled Outages
    • None through Oct 11

CENTER ANNOUNCEMENTS

OLCF USER DOCUMENTATION IS MOVING
As discussed on the September OLCF User Conference Call, our user documentation (system user guides, data transfer information, account information) is moving. The new site for this documentation is https://docs.olcf.ornl.gov, which is now live. This documentation will replace the equivalent user documentation available on the main OLCF website (the user documentation on that site will eventually be removed and redirected to the new site), so we encourage you to begin using (and providing feedback on) the new site now.

An important new feature of our documentation is the ability for you
to add your suggestions and contributions via https://github.com/olcf/olcf-user-docs/. Please begin using the new site for systems documentation and feel free to contribute suggestions, corrections, or additional documentation. If you have any questions, please contact help@olcf.ornl.gov.

NEW REQUIREMENT FOR ALCC PROPOSALS
For the 2020-2021 ALCC campaign, PIs are required to submit a Letter of Intent (LOI) as the first step of submitting a proposal. The ALCC submission site will open at noon on Oct 1 with LOIs due on Dec. 16. All proposals are due when the submission site closes at 11:59 PM (Eastern Time) on Feb. 3, 2020. Information from the LOI will be automatically populated to the proposal by December 18. More information can be found at https://science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/ALCC

2019 OLCF USER SURVEY IS NOW AVAILABLE
The 2019 OLCF User Survey is now open. We truly value your feedback and encourage all users to complete this important survey. To take it, please visit https://orausurvey.orau.org/n/OLCFSurvey2019.aspx.

PYTHON 2 END OF LIFE; TRANSITION TO PYTHON 3
On January 1, 2020, Python 2 will reach its end of life and will no longer be supported by the project’s core developers. On this date, the OLCF will also end its support for Python 2. Users reliant on Python 2 should port code to Python 3 for forward compatibility with OLCF systems and many open source packages. Python 2 modules will not be removed on January 1, but will no longer receive maintenance or regular updates.

While default Python modules on OLCF systems are already set to Python 3, we recommend all users follow PEP394 by explicitly invoking either ‘python2’ or ‘python3’ instead of simply ‘python’. Python 2 Conda Environments, as well as user installations of Python 2 will remain as options for using Python 2 on OLCF systems.

Official documentation for porting from Python 2 to Python3 can be found at https://docs.python.org/3/howto/pyporting.html.

General information and a list of open source packages dropping support for Python 2 can be found at https://python3statement.org/.

PROCESS LIMITS ON SUMMIT LOGIN NODES
During the September 24 outage, cgroups were enabled on Summit’s login nodes to help better ensure resource availability for all users of the shared nodes. By default each user will now be limited to 8GB of memory, 8 hardware threads, and 1 GPU. For more information on the login node cgroup settings please see the Summit User Guide.

PREEMPTABLE QUEUE ON SUMMIT
A preemptable queue (named the “killable” queue on the system) is now available on Summit. Running in this queue gives jobs that request fewer than 92 nodes the ability to request walltimes up to 24 hours; however, these jobs are subject to being preempted (killed and re-queued) once the job reaches a minimum walltime. More information on running in the preemptable queue can be found in the Scheduling Policy section of the Summit User Guide.

HIP IS AVAILABLE ON SUMMIT
HIP is a C++ runtime API that allows developers to write portable code to run on AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. It is an interface that uses the underlying Radeon Open Compute (ROCm) or CUDA platform that is installed on a system. For more information, see the Preparing for Frontier section of the Summit User Guide.

MEETINGS & WORKSHOPS

OLCF USER CONFERENCE CALL (SEP 25)
Thanks for joining us for the September OLCF User Conference Call, which featured an overview of upcoming changes to OLCF user documentation led by Graham Lopez. If you would like to review the call video (or if you were unable to attend and would like to viewit for the first time), it will be made available on the event page in the next few days.

UPCOMING SCHEDULED OUTAGES

There are no outages scheduled through October 11.