Parallel Jobs with Sun HPC

The Sun High Performance Computing (HPC) product suite provides an environment for running compute intensive parallel applications. These applications are written using the Sun MPI libraries and launched using the LSF software. These are typically scientific applications written in scientific programming languages such as FORTRAN.

Parallel Job Support in LSF Software

Applications that are too compute-intensive to run effectively on a single computer, can be broken into smaller pieces that can run simultaneously on several computers. A popular method for creating these parallel applications is to create the application using the Message Passing Interface (MPI).

To execute a parallel application under the LSF software, it must first be compiled with the MPI libraries. The following diagram shows the job execution flow of a parallel application.

The Master Batch Daemon (MDB) dispatches the job based on data obtained from the Load Information Manager (LIM). The MBD then contacts a Slave Batch Daemon (SBD), which starts the Parallel Application Manager (PAM) on one of the execution hosts. The PAM then dispatches pieces (tasks) of the job to other execution hosts in the LSF cluster.