IN THIS MESSAGE

  • Center Announcements
    • 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 4

CENTER ANNOUNCEMENTS

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)
The September OLCF User Conference Call will be held on Wednesday, September 25 at noon (Eastern Time). The call will include a discussion of upcoming changes to OLCF User Documentation led by OLCF’s Graham Lopez. Details of the call, including information on how to join, can be found on the call’s event page.

UPCOMING SCHEDULED OUTAGES

There are no outages scheduled through October 4.