The Users Bulletin provides a summary of new policies, procedures, and events of interest to MSI users. It is published quarterly.
1. Xeon Phi Seminars: Intel will be providing a seminar and hands-on training about developing codes for the Xeon Phi coprocessor. The seminar will be held on September 24, 2015 and the hands-on training will be on September 25. You must attend the seminar to participate in the hands-on training. This course is free, but you must pre-register; links to registration sites are on the MSI website: Parallel Programming and Optimization With Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor.
2. New Simplified SU and Storage Allocation Procedure:Starting this October during our 2016 allocation renewal period, requesting SUs and data storage will become a lot easier for most of our users. SU requests will fall under three categories:
• groups requesting less than 70K SUs
• groups requesting between 70K and 280K SUs, and
• groups requesting more than 280K SUs.
Groups will only be required to provide justification if they are asking for more than 280K SUs or if a group is asking for more than 70K SUs and does not yet have a history of using more than 70K SUs at MSI.
Storage requests will be handled in a similar manner. That is, storage requests will fall into one of three categories:
• default, which is 150 GB or less
• requests between 150 GB and 5 TB, and
• requests for more than 5 TB.
Here again, groups requesting 150 GB or less will not be required to provide justification for their storage allocation. Groups already using less than 5 TB of data will also not be required to provide justification for their current allocation. Groups requesting over 5 TB will be required to provide detailed justification.
The idea behind the new procedures is to only require justification from groups who are requesting access to very large portions of MSI’s shared resources (computing or storage). Also new this fall, supplemental or mid-year allocations will be reviewed on a rolling basis in order to get groups connected to the resources they need as quickly as possible. More details regarding the simplified allocation procedure will be available on the MSI website as we get closer to the renewal period.
3. Deadline for Supplemental SU/Storage Requests: The MSI HPC Allocation Committee considers requests for supplemental allocations every quarter. The next review will be in October.
If you would like to request additional HPC resources for 2015, you should submit a request for additional SUs and/or more storage space. The hard deadline to submit a request is Thursday, October 1, 2015 by 11:59 PM CST.
Requests should be made using the online Supplemental Request Form. They must be sent by the Principal Investigator or Group Administrator.
See how to check your current allocations at the following links:
• SU usage and allocation
• Disk quota
4. MSI Website: MSI will be launching our new website on Monday, September 21. The new site should have better functionality for our users.
5. Overclocked Queue Retired:Due to warranty expiration and hardware failure, the four-node Overclocked queue has been retired.
6. Fall Tutorials:The list of upcoming tutorials for the fall is posted on the MSI website. This list will be updated continually as we schedule tutorials. Upcoming tutorials for the next month also appear on the homepage.
7. Software Renewals and Discontinuations: In order to align software resources to the needs of researchers, MSI’s software working group regularly reviews software at MSI. The Software Renewal page contains information about which software packages are coming up for renewal and which ones will not be renewed. You can also provide feedback and requests for MSI software purchases.
8. Jobs Available at MSI:
a. Student Admin/Support Services
b. Clinical Molecular Research Informatics Analyst
c. Student Tech Support Services
9. Useful Webpages: Looking for help with your research? MSI has a number of complimentary services:
a. Software application and database development
b. Interdisciplinary informatics and bioinformatics
e. Network and general computing
10. Useful email addresses:
a. Address for requesting technical assistance: help@msi.umn.edu
b. Address for submitting citations for articles, papers, posters, book chapters, and other publications supported in whole or in part by MSI resources: submissions@msi.umn.edu
c. Address for submitting videos of your research or suggestions for research articles: videoclips-articles@msi.umn.edu