High Performance Compute Clusters

If you do not have access, please use the following form to request access:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSexQVFZmah6n3civiNJGkxnkVecUOTWKJfFE4ZVhr9dDJstqw/viewform

Idaho State University's College of Science and Engineering has several compute clusters that can be accessed by faculty, staff, and students in the University. This is a "How to get started" with our compute clusters.

How to sign in -

All of our clusters run CentOS 7. They can only be accessed via ssh on port 22. This guide is a great tool for anyone new to SSH and the command line. For everyone else, below is the proper command for minerve. Your password will be the same password that you use to login to Bengalweb.

ssh <username>@minerve.cose.isu.edu

For thorshammer:

ssh <username>@thorshammer.rdc.isu.edu

How to run Jobs using Torque -

We use a job scheduling tool called Torque to execute jobs. Jobs are submitting using the command "qsub". Parameters, configurations, programs are put into a submission file and then submitted via "qsub". 

Here is an example qsub submission file for submitting a compiled c++ program (helloworld.c++) that will be scheduled with the command "qsub <name of saved file below".

#!/bin/bash

#PBS -S /bin/bash

#PBS -m abe

#PBS -M <email address>@isu.edu

#PBS -N <submissionName>

#PBS -q default

#PBS -l nodes=<number of nodes between 1-8>:ppn=<number of processors per node 1-16>

#PBS -e ./<error filename example: error.txt>

#PBS -o ./<output filename example: output.txt>

PROGRAM="<path to program>/helloworld.c++"

echo "Starting Hello World job from in 5 seconds: $PROGRAM"

sleep 5

mpirun -np <number of nodes multiplied by number of processors per node> $PROGRAM

Further reading - http://www.arc.ox.ac.uk/content/torque-job-scheduler

Software Currently Available - 

c, c++, java, fortran, docker, and a handful of others. If the software you need is not installed, or you are having issues submitting a job, please email us at hpcchelp@isu.edu.