Franklin Timeline

This page records a brief timeline of significant events and user environment changes on Franklin.

April 28, 2008

Hardware and software maintenance. Installed Field Notice. Installed additional patch for SeaStar HB fault. Reconfigured Lustre to allow access from 4 network nodes. NERSC reserves the right to kill jobs that are over the limit of 8 for multiple simultaneous apruns in a batch job from today.

April 22, 2008

Started to enforce 60-min time limit on processes running on login nodes.

April 21, 2008

Fixed the firmware change defect for SPR 741141. Set the limit of 8 for multiple simultaneous apruns in a batch job, will enforce from 04/28/08.

April 2, 2008

OS upgrade to 2.0.44a2. Installed a portals patch (firmware change) for SPR 741141 to increase system stability. Installed patches for two Lustre quota bugs.

March 26, 2008

Hardware and software maintenance. More power modules swapped. Updated PIC code for voltage settings. Set pgi/7.1.4, craypat/4.1.1, Apprentice2/4.1, and papi/3.5.99b to default.

March 22, 2008

Set CNL kernel boot parameter idle=poll.

March 19, 2008

gcc/4.2.3 and acml/4.0.1a set to default. Torque rolled back to version 2.2.0

March 12, 2008

Hardware and software maintenance. More power modules swapped. Torque upgraded to version 2.2.2-200712171618. Security field notice FN5509 applied.

February 27, 2008

Hardware maintenance. More power modules swapped.

February 13, 2008

OS upgraded to CNL version 2.0.39. Has the multiple apruns in background feature. ACML is not automatically invoked by compiler driver any more. Fixed the Lustre falsely thinks user inode over quota problem. Installed patch for degraded IOR read and write performance due to quota enabled. "2s" firmware setting in place to fix a portal's issue related to seastar non-deadbeaf hang. set CNL kernel boot parameter idle=halt.

February 7, 2008

Hardware maintenance. Swapped some power modules.

January 22, 2007

MPT portals fix for the MPI send-to-self deadlock problemi, also solved the problem of MPI_allreduce call needing an explicit barrier.

January 9, 2008

xt-craypat/4.1 and apprentice/4.1 installed as non-default.

January 8, 2008

FY08 production year starts. Production queues max wall clock limit increased from 12 hours to 24 hours. Reduced the reg_small maximum tasks to 2416. Enabled premium queue. Franklin starts official charging with charging factor of 6.5 and 50% discount for jobs using 1208+ nodes.

December 13, 2007

Moab/5.1.0p8 installed and set to default.

December 10, 2007

GCC/4.1.2 installed.

December 5, 2007

UPC/1.0.2 installed.

December 3, 2007

Set apprentice/4.0 as default.

November 29, 2007

Moab configure changes. Max user idle limit for reg_big increased from 1 to 2.

November 16, 2007

Installed CrayPat 4.0.0, made module xt-craypat/4.0 the default. Installed Apprentice 4.0.0, still set apprentice2/3.2.3 the default.

November 7, 2007

Moab configuration changes for enforcing gloabl limit, and for settings per CLASS.

November 2, 2007

Set Pathscale default version from 3.0 to 3.1.

October 31, 2007

Libsci default changed from 10.0.1 to 10.2.0.

October 26, 2007

Franklin officially accepted by NERSC form Cray.

October 23, 2007

Fix for NWCHEM, GAMESS and Global Arrays codes: The default xt-mpt module has been set from 2.0.24b to 2.0.24d, with a new environment variable SHMEM_SWAP_BACKOFF set to 100.

October 19, 2007

Default compiler versions upgraded: pgi from 6.2.5 to 7.0.7, and gcc from 3.2.3 to 4.2.1.

October 17, 2007

Franklin some Moab config changes.

October 15-22 2007

Production CNL benchmark runs.

October 14, 2007

User quota enforced. Franklin queue structure regarding regular batch classes was simplified to have only "reg_small", "reg_big" and "reg_xbig" classes to replace the original 10+ buckets.

October 13-14 2007

Dedicated CNL witness benchmark runs.

October 8 2007

OS upgrade to OS 2.0.24b+ (GA version). Installed ALPS 9/5 RPM, which includes fix for MPMD aprun command line issues, and aprun -L issues.

October 5, 2007

Installed patch on Franklin for SHMEM portals problem

September 24-26, 2007

All NERSC Users enabled on Franklin

September 24, 2007

Trap installed for Shmem atomic problem on Franklin

September 14, 2007

Installed new Moab version 5.1.0p7. /dd>

September 12, 2007

Installed pgi/7.0.7 and gcc/4.2.1. Not set as default.

September 10, 2007

OS 2.0.14 patched for enabling "aprun -L" option.

September 7, 2007

OS 2.0.14 patched for enabling aprun MPMD mode.

August 3, 2007

Acceptance period begins. The system is tested and tuned and is required to pass strict performance and functionality tests.

Early July 2007

Early users started to have access on Franklin.

June to August, 2007

Assessed CNL with initial testing, testing at scale and improvements.

First two weeks in June 2007

Franklin CNL evaluation, installed CNL the week it was released from Cray Develop to Cray Testing.

March to May, 2007

System integration and partial acceptance testing with CVN.

Early March, 2007

Very-early staff users started to have access to Franklin.

February 10-12, 2007

Franklin phase 2a (30 cabinets) and phase 2b delivered (36 cabinets).

January 29-31, 2007

Franklin Isobase installed.

January 16, 2007

Franklin phase 1 delivered (36 XT4 cabinets, 11 DDN cabinets).

December 7, 2006

Silence upgraded to XT4.

August 21, 2006

Test System "Silence" (1 XT3 cabinet) arrived at OSF.

August 10, 2006

Franklin contract awarded to Cray by DOE.