CRESCO6

Warning

The support/ticketing services and the backup services on the GPFS filesystem related to the CRESCO 6 cluster ended on September 30, 2025; The user GPFS scratch area of CRESCO 6 (/gporq2/scratch_0/usr/<username>) is no longer subject to synchronization or transfer to the new LUSTRE filesystem*; The CRESCO 6 cluster remains available for use, subject to the limitations indicated above.

Note

Users interested in migrating to the LUSTRE filesystem of CRESCO 8 are advised to copy the files currently stored in the scratch area to their GPFS store area on CRESCO 6, in compliance with the available quota limits.

Cluster Characteristics

The CRESCO6 cluster located in Portici is a computing system consisting of 434 nodes. Each node is equipped with:

  • 2 sockets, each with 24 cores, featuring Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8160 processors with a clock frequency of 2.10 GHz and 192 GB of RAM.

  • One 100 Gb/s Intel Omni-Path interface.

  • Two Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) interfaces.

  • BMC/IPMI 1.8 support and software for remote console management

A total of 20,832 cores are available, interconnected through a high-bandwidth, low-latency network based on 100 Gb/s Intel Omni-Path technology.

The architecture of a CRESCO6 node can be summarized in the following diagram:

../_images/cresco6_image1.png

Front-End Nodes

Access to the cluster is performed by logging into one of the front-end nodes. The front-end nodes are intended solely for submitting jobs through LSF, editing job submission scripts, or compiling applications. Compute nodes can only be accessed through LSF.

For the CRESCO6 cluster, the following front-end nodes are available:

cresco6x001.portici.enea.it
cresco6x002.portici.enea.it (also available for interactive applications)

Access

To access the system via SSH, refer to the documentation at the page Access to CRESCO System.

Note that the access to the ENEAGRID front-end nodes can also be performed via the web interface available on the CRESCO Open OnDemand page:

Interface CRESCO-ONDEMAND

File Systems

The file systems available on CRESCO6 are:

AFS: The geographically distributed file system shared across the entire ENEAGRID infrastructure. Information about the common HOME directory structure for all ENEAGRID/CRESCO users can be found in the section File Systems and Data Management available here.

GPFS: The high-performance parallel I/O file system. Information aboutGPFS** for ENEAGRID/CRESCO users is available here.

Compilers and Numerical Libraries

The table below lists the compilers and numerical libraries available on CRESCO6.

Compilers and Numerical Libraries on CRESCO6

GNU (4.8.5)

GNU (7.3.0)

Intel (17.0.4)

Intel (18.0.2)

PGI (11.10-0)

Compiler PATH

/usr/bin

/opt/gcc730/bin

/opt/intel/bin

/opt/intel18/bin

/afs/enea.it/software/pgi_11.10/linux86-64/11.10/bin

Numerical Libraries PATH

BLAS/LAPACK/ATLAS
/usr/lib
/usr/lib64
/usr/lib/atlas-sse*
/usr/lib64/atlas
/usr/lib64/atlas-sse*
BLAS/LAPACK/ATLAS
/usr/lib
/usr/lib64
/usr/lib/atlas-sse*
/usr/lib64/atlas
/usr/lib64/atlas-sse*
Intel MKL
/opt/intel/mkl/lib/intel64
Intel MKL
/opt/intel18/mkl/lib/intel64
PGI for AMD/ACML and CUDA
/afs/enea.it/software/pgi_11.10/linux86-64/11.10/lib
/afs/enea.it/software/pgi_11.10/linux86-64/11.10/libso

Available MPI Flavours

The available MPI flavours, grouped by compiler, are listed in the following table:

MPI Flavours Available on CRESCO6

GNU (version 4.8.5 / 7.3.0)

Intel (version 17.0.4 / 18.0.2)

PGI (version 11.10-0)

MVAPICH

mvapich2.2.2_gcc_hfi

mvapich2.2.2_intel-hfi

mvapich2.2.2_pgi-hfi

OpenMPI

openmpi_gcc-1.10.4-hfi
openmpi_gcc-3.1.1
openmpi_gcc730-3.1.1
openmpi_intel-1.10.4-hfi
openmpi_intel-3.1.1
openmpi_pgi-1.10.4-hfi
openmpi_pgi-3.1.1

Intel MPI

None

IntelMPI

None

Job Submission

The scheduler that manages the resources of CRESCO6 and allows the submission of batch jobs is LSF.

Below are the submission queues defined for this cluster, along with some examples of submission wrappers for OpenMPI, MVAPICH, and IntelMPI.

LSF Queues on CRESCO6

PARTITION

DESCRIPTION

cresco6_48h24

Queue for parallel jobs requiring at least 48 cores.
Maximum running time: 24 hours. Open to all users for testing purposes.

Note

It accepts jobs requesting a number of cores that is a multiple of 48. A fairshare policy is enforced on this queue, reducing the priority of jobs submitted by users who have already made intensive use of the system.

OpenMPI (GCC, Intel, PGI)

#!/bin/sh

exe=/path/to/exe                           # path of your MPI program
HOSTFILE=$LSB_DJOB_HOSTFILE                # name of hostfile for mpirun

N_procs=`cat $LSB_DJOB_HOSTFILE | wc -l`   # give to mpirun same number of slots

mpirun --mca plm_rsh_agent "blaunch.sh" -n $N_procs --hostfile $HOSTFILE $exe

MVAPICH (GCC, Intel, PGI)

#!/bin/sh

exe=/path/to/exe                           # path of your MPI program
HOSTFILE=$LSB_DJOB_HOSTFILE                # name of hostfile for mpirun

N_procs=`cat $LSB_DJOB_HOSTFILE | wc -l`   # give to mpirun same number of slots

mpirun_rsh -rsh -np $N_procs -hostfile $HOSTFILE $exe

Intel MPI

#!/bin/sh

exe=/path/to/exe                           # path of your MPI program
N_procs=`cat $LSB_DJOB_HOSTFILE | wc -l`   # number of slots

host_numb=`echo "$N_procs/48" | bc`       # number of hosts to involve

export I_MPI_HYDRA_BRANCH_COUNT=$host_numb

mpirun -bootstrap rsh $exe

Submission Examples

bsub -o output.o -e error.e -q cresco6_48h24 -n <number_of_cores> ./submission_script

(Parallel jobs with <number_of_cores> ≥ 48)

bsub -o output.o -e error.e -q cresco6_48h48 -n <number_of_cores> ./submission_script

(Parallel jobs with <number_of_cores> ≥ 48)

Note

Please note that on the cresco6_48h24 queue, in order for a job to be accepted, the number of requested cores must be a multiple of 48 (the number of cores per compute node), up to a maximum of 6144 cores (128 nodes). On the cresco6_48h48 queue, jobs must also be submitted in multiples of 48, up to a maximum of 3072 cores (64 nodes). It should be noted that 3072 cores also represent the total number of cores available system-wide for all users on this queue at any given time.