By The Center for Nanoscale Materials
Computational tool for bridging the electronic, atomistic and mesoscale simulations The CNM’s HPC Cluster "Carbon" offers capabilities for theory and modeling as well as for experimental data processing. The cluster is located in CNM's dedicated data center in Building 440, occupying approx. 30% of the room's total area of 1,200 square feet. The cluster consists of several hundred individual computers and data storage units, placed in racks and tightly networked together to allow fast parallel processing. The hardware components are replaced or added over time to take advantage of more capable or more energy-efficient hardware. Currently available for users are 2,600 cores on central processing units (CPU) and 20 Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), for approximately 25 Tflops performance, with 4–12 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM) per core and an InfiniBand interconnect for fast parallel computations and storage access. Storage is provided by a Lustre parallel file system with 520 terabytes net capacity, hosted on several Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) systems and highly available servers. A large number of HPC applications are installed on the cluster, with focus on atomistic modeling and nanophotonics. Packages for molecular visualization, general analysis, libraries, and development round out the system. Recent upgrades included addition of 40 nodes in FY 2017 and 52 nodes in FY 2018, and an upgrade of the operating system to CentOS-7. Scientific Contact: Michael Sternberg
