Icestorm

The Martinos Center has a custom-built server called icestorm, which has 1 TB of RAM (64GB per 16 nodes) and 32 Intel quad core Xeon E5472 processors (128 cores). In addition, it is configured with Virtual SMP Architecture (vSMP Foundation 3.5.175.53), which uses software to link the nodes in a transparent manner, providing cache coherency and shared I/O and BIOS to conserve processing power.

Rules of Use

Icestorm should be used for jobs that can't be run on either launchpad or the icepuffs, meaning they must need over 256 GB of RAM or over eight CPUs. In other words, these need to be jobs that would otherwise not be able to run at all on launchpad or the icepuffs or because they would run exponentially (not linearly) slower. Users found running jobs on icestorm that can be run just fine on launchpad or the icepuffs will have their access to icestorm revoked.

Access

Login access to icestorm is restricted to approved accounts only. Once you're certain your jobs cannot run on launchpad or the icepuffs, subscribe yourself to the martinos-hpc mailing list. Any and all announcements regarding icestorm will be sent to this list. Once you have subscribed, contact the Martinos Center Help Desk to be granted access to icestorm. You can sign up for icestorm timeslots with the Martinos Center Scheduler.