Section: Other Grants and Activities

High Performance Computing Center

The ICluster2, the IDPot and the new Digitalis Platforms

The MESCAL project-team manages a cluster computing center on the Grenoble campus. The center manages different architectures: a 48 bi-processors PC (ID-POT), and the center is involved with a cluster based on 110 bi-processors Itanium2 (ICluster-2) and another based on 34 bi-processor quad-core XEON (Digitalis) located at INRIA. The three of them are integrated in the Grid'5000 grid platform.

More than 60 research projects in France have used the architectures, especially the 204 processors Icluster-2. Half of them have run typical numerical applications on this machine, the remainder has worked on middleware and new technology for cluster and grid computing. The Icluster-2 has been stopped this year as it was getting obsolete and has been replaced by the Digitalis platform. The Digitalis cluster is also meant to replace the Grimage platform in which the MOAIS project-team is very involved.

The BULL Machine

In the context of our collaboration with BULL (LIPS, NUMASIS), the MESCAL project-team acquired a Novascale NUMA machine. The configuration is based on 8 Itanium II processors at 1.5 Ghz and 16 GB of RAM. This platform is mainly used by the BULL PhD students. This machine is also connected to the CIMENT Grid.

GRID 5000 and CIMENT

The MESCAL project-team is involved in development and management of Grid'5000 platform. The Digitalis and IDPot clusters are integrated in Grid'5000. Moreover, these two clusters take part in CIMENT Grid. More precisely, their unused resources may be exploited to execute jobs from partners of CIMENT project (see Section  8.1.1 ).