Note: If you have an unused balance of time on NCSA's CM-5, you can transfer this balance to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

On January 30, 1997 the CM-5 at NCSA will be retired from computational service. This notice is to inform you of the details surrounding the final shutdown of the CM-5. First and foremost, we hope that you have made progress in porting any applications you require to alternative platforms. Our top priority over the past several months has been to ensure that you have had the tools and information available to successfully port your applications to alternative platforms. Additional information, including notes and overheads from the code migration workshops that have been held, on this issue is available on our CM-5 Migration Page at:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Consulting/HPCC/Systems/cm5/migration.html

If you require further assistance in migrating your codes, please contact the HPC Consulting Office at 217-244-1144.

Timing of shutdown

All user processes on the CM-5 partitions will be killed at 11:59 PM, January 30, 1997. After this time user access will be denied to the CM-5 partitions and partitional managers (cm5a, cm5b, cm5c, cm5d and cm5e). At the same time, user access will to the SDA (Scalable Disk Array) will be denied. All users are advised to store any needed data on the SDA to the UniTree mass storage system.

Access to the compile server (cm5.ncsa.uiuc.edu) will be provided through February 28, 1997. This means there will be continued access to home directories and scratch filesystems. However, be aware that software licensed from Thinking Machine (eg., CM Fortran compiler, Prism ,etc.) for use with the CM-5 will not be available.

Transferring unused allocated time

The unused balance of allocations on the CM-5 may be transferred, at the request of the project's Principal Investigator (PI), to other NCSA machines, the HP/Convex Exemplar and SGI/Cray POWER CHALLENGEarray. These allocations will expire either on April 30, 1997 or on their original expiration date, whichever is later. The PI must specifically request that an allocation balance be transferred and specify the system to which it will be transferred. CM-5 SUs will be converted to SGI POWER CHALLENGEarray SUs by applying a factor of 15 and to HP/Convex Exemplar SUs by applying a factor of 20.

In addition, under the auspices of the Joint Peer Review Board, coordinated with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), PSC has offered to allow transfers of unused allocation balances to their new 256 node SGI/Cray T3E. Conversion rates have not yet been established and NCSA and PSC will resolve this issue shortly.

All requests for unused balnce transfers should come in a response to this letter or be directed to NCSA Allocations at allocations@ncsa.uiuc.edu.

Getting help

We have been working during the past several months to make this transition as smooth as possible for you. (Please also review my previous letter about the retirement of the CM-5.) If you have questions or concerns, please contact Charlie Catlett, Associate Director for Computing and Communications, at 217-333-1163. If you require further assistance in migrating your applications, please contact the HPC Consulting Office as soon as possible, as noted above.

Thank you,

NCSA Director