Alpine Hardware¶
Hardware Summary¶
| Count & Type | Scheduler Partition | Processor | Sockets | Cores (total) | Threads/Core | RAM/Core (GB) | L3 Cache (MB) | GPU type | GPU count | Local Disk Capacity & Type | Fabric | OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 184 Milan General CPU | amilan | x86_64 AMD Milan | 1 or 2 | 64 | 1 | 3.8 | 32 | N/A | 0 | 416G SSD | HDR-100 InfiniBand (200Gb inter-node fabric) | RHEL 8.4 |
| 12 Milan High-Memory | amem | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 48 | 1 | 21.5 | tbd | N/A | 0 | 416G SSD | HDR-100 InfiniBand (200Gb inter-node fabric) | RHEL 8.4 |
| 8 Milan AMD GPU | ami100 | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 64 | 1 | 3.8 | 32 | AMD MI100 | 3 | 416G SSD | 2x25 Gb Ethernet +RoCE | RHEL 8.4 |
| 8 Milan NVIDIA GPU | aa100 | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 64 | 1 | 3.8 | 32 | NVIDIA A100 | 3 | 416G SSD | 2x25 Gb Ethernet +RoCE | RHEL 8.4 |
| 28 Milan General CPU | csu | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 48 | 1 | 3.8 | 32 | N/A | 3 | 416G SSD | 2x25 Gb Ethernet +RoCE | RHEL 8.4 |
| 49 Milan General CPU | csu | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 32 | 1 | 3.8 | 32 | N/A | 3 | 416G SSD | 2x25 Gb Ethernet +RoCE | RHEL 8.4 |
| 14 Milan General CPU | amc | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 64 | 1 | 3.8 | 32 | NVIDIA A100 | 3 | 416G SSD | 2x25 Gb Ethernet +RoCE | RHEL 8.4 |
| 2 Milan High-Memory | amc,amem | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 64 | 1 | 21.5 | 32 | N/A | 3 | 416G SSD | 2x25 Gb Ethernet +RoCE | RHEL 8.4 |
| 4 Milan NVIDIA GPU | amc | x86_64 AMD Milan | 2 | 64 | 1 | 3.8 | 32 | N/A | 3 | 416G SSD | 2x25 Gb Ethernet +RoCE | RHEL 8.4 |
Requesting Hardware Resources¶
Resources are requested within jobs by passing in SLURM directives, or resource flags, to either a job script (most common) or to the command line when submitting a job. Below are some common resource directives for Alpine (summarized then detailed):
- Partition: Specifies node type
- Gres (General Resources): Specifies the number of GPUs (required if using a GPU node)
- QOS (Quality of Service): Constrains or modifies job characteristics
Partitions¶
Nodes with the same hardware configuration are grouped into partitions. You specify a partition using --partition SLURM directive in your job script (or at the command line when submitting an interactive job) in order for your job to run on the appropriate type of node.
Note: GPU nodes require the additional--gresdirective (see next section).
Partitions available on Alpine:
| Partition | Description | # of nodes | cores/node | RAM/core (GB) | Billing weight | Default/Max Walltime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| amilan | AMD Milan (default) | 184 | 64 | 3.75 | 1 | 24H, 24H |
| ami100 | GPU-enabled (3x AMD MI100) | 8 | 64 | 3.75 | tbd | 24H, 24H |
| aa100 | GPU-enabled (3x NVIDIA A100) | 8 | 64 | 3.75 | tbd | 24H, 24H |
| amem1 | High-memory | 4 | 48 | 20.832 | tbd | 4H, 7D |
| csu | Nodes contributed by CSU | 77 | 32 or 48 | 3.75 | 1 | 24H, 24H |
1The amem partition requires the mem QOS. The mem QOS is only available to jobs asking for 256GB of RAM or more, 12 nodes or fewer, and 96 cores or fewer. For example, you can run one 96-core job or up to two 48-core jobs, etc. If you need more memory or cores, please contact rc-help@colorado.edu.
2On the amem partition, if you request all 48 cores on a node without specifying the --mem flag, you will receive 1000 GB (1024000 MB) of RAM on the node. Because of the way slurm handles units conversions, if you use the --mem flag, the maximum RAM you can request is 976.5 GB (1000000 MB) RAM.
- Note: NVIDIA A100 GPUs only support CUDA versions >11.x
All users, regardless of institution, should specify partitions as follows:
--partition=amilan
--partition=aa100
--partition=ami100
--partition=amem
--partition=csu
Special-purpose partitions
atesting provides access to limited resources for the purpose of verifying workflows and MPI jobs. Users are able to request up to 2 CPU nodes (16 cores per node) for a maximum runtime of 3 hours (default 30 minutes). Users who need GPU nodes to test workflows should use the appropriate GPU partition (ami100 or aa100) instead of atesting.
atesting usage examples:
Request one core per node for 10 minutes
sinteractive --partition=atesting --ntasks-per-node=1 --qos=testing --nodes=2 --time=00:10:00
Request 4 cores for the default time of 30 minutes
sinteractive --partition=atesting --qos=testing --ntasks=4
Request 2 cores each from 2 nodes for testing MPI
sinteractive --ntasks-per-node=2 --nodes=2 --partition=atesting --qos=testing
acompile provides near immediate access to limited resources for the purpose of compiling and viewing the module stack. Users can request up to 4 CPU cores (but no GPUs) for a maximum runtime of 12 hours. The partition is accessed with the acompile command. Users who need GPU nodes to compile software should use Slurm’s sinteractive command with the appropriate GPU partition (ami100 or aa100) instead of acompile.
acompile usage examples:
Get usage information for acompile
acompile --help
Request 2 CPU cores for 2 hours
acompile --ntasks=2 --time=02:00:00
General Resources (gres)¶
General resources allows for fine-grain hardware specifications. On Alpine the gres directive is required to use GPU accelerators on GPU nodes. At a minimum, one would specify --gres=gpu in their job script (or on the command line when submitting a job) to specify that they would like to use a single gpu on their specified partition. One can also request multiple GPU accelerators on nodes that have multiple accelerators. Alpine GPU resources and configurations can be viewed as follows on a login node with the slurm/alpine module loaded:
$ sinfo --Format NodeList:30,Partition,Gres |grep gpu |grep -v "mi100|a100"
Examples of GPU configurations/requests:
request a single GPU accelerator:
--gres=gpu
request multiple (in this case 3) GPU accelerators:
--gres=gpu:3
Quality of Service (qos)¶
Quality of Service or QoS is used to constrain or modify the characteristics that a job can have. This could come in the form of specifying a QoS to request for a longer run time. For example, by selecting the long QoS, a user can place the job in a lower priority queue with a max wall time increased from 24 hours to 7 days.
The available QoS’s for Alpine are:
| QOS name | Description | Max walltime | Max jobs/user | Node limits | Partition limits | Priority Adjustment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| normal | Default | 1D | tbd | tbd | n/a | 0 |
| long | Longer wall times | 7D | tbd | tbd | tbd | 0 |
| mem | High-memory jobs | 7D | tbd | 12 | amem only | 0 |
Alpine is jointly funded by the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Anschutz, Colorado State University, and the National Science Foundation (award 2201538).
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