Hi folks.
We have 7 p655's with 8 CPU's and 1 p690 with 32 CPU's. These machines
are linked with a 1 gigabit, low-latency switch for MPI computations
using a switch from IBM called an "SP2 switch", AKA a "Colony switch".
We're currently running AIX 5.1. IBM is telling us that AIX 5.3 will
never support our SP2 switch, so our upgrade path seems to have
disappeared shortly after purchasing the equipment.
Is there any possibility of SuSe for pSeries supporting this hardware
effectively, especially the SP2 switch (now or in the future)? Would we
have to toss the SP2 switch and go with (much higher latency) gigabit
ethernet, or myrinet or something for our MPI computations?
How's the SMP support on pSeries? Is it up to handling 32 CPU's well
yet?
One of the reasons the guy with the grant money for this compute cluster
wanted AIX, was for the AIX compilers - so I need to ask: Will SuSe for
pSeries be able to use xlc/xlC/xlf/xlf90/xlf95 and such?
Also, is loadleveler available for SuSe on pSeries? That's the queuing
system we're using now, and it's also the queuing system many of the
freely redistributable climatology programs we need are written to work
with...
Thanks!