Laboratory computing center (english version)

(update february 24th 2023)

Person in charge

Laurent COURNÈDE

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The computing center consists of a set of computers whose pooled resources allow IMN's modelers to increase their computing power.

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Technical specifications

Computers are classified in "tier" levels: a local computer such as the laboratory one, is tier-3. It is complementary to the CCIPL regional computer (mesocenter, tier-2) and to the national centers (tier-1). It allows the initiation to modeling (trainees, doctoral students) or the implementation of small-scale parallel calculations. The Institute's computing cluster is composed of 24 machines - including 22 computing nodes - interconnected by a fast dedicated network ("Infiniband" network at 40 Gb/s). The storage of computational data offers a capacity of 7 TB (permanent storage) and 13 TB for intermediate results ("scratch"); it has 304 cores with 4 GB RAM/core available for calculations:

- 12 nodes dual-processor Intel Xeon E5-2620, 6 cores

- 10 nodes dual-processor Intel Xeon Silver 4110, 8 cores

This cluster is located in an air-conditioned room to maintain an optimal operating temperature. It is protected by a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) in order to avoid untimely electrical variations.

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Terms of access

Anyone from IMN can get an account on the IMN computer without any condition. The submission of computational jobs is possible from a machine connected to the laboratory network or through the VPN from outside (the laboratory).

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Available softwares

Any software owned by the laboratory can be compiled on the computer. The following codes are already installed and available to everyone:

• • • AIMPRO
    • VASP
    • Wien2K
    • GAUSSIAN

Molecular dynamics codes:

• • • LAMMPS

Thermodynamics/statistics codes:

• • • ATAT

Visualization tools:

• • • ATOMEYE
    • jMol
    • Avogadro
    • VMD
    • Diamond
    • VESTA
    • OVITO