How To Use a Single Intel® Cluster Checker Configuration File for Different Cluster Configurations

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Intel® Software Network

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	April 28, 2009 10:00 PM PDT

Note: the capabilities described in this article require Intel® Cluster Checker version 1.3 Update 2 or later.

You have two cluster configurations, one based on nodes with Intel® Xeon® Processor X5355 (2.66 GHz, quad-core) and one based on nodes with Intel® Xeon® Processor 5160 (3 GHz, dual-core.) For this article, the rest of the configuration is assumed to be identical. You could use two different Intel® Cluster Checker configuration files for these clusters. This article describes how to use the groups capability of Intel® Cluster Checker to cover both of these hardware configurations with one configuration file.

The configuration file for the X5355-based cluster contains the following processor specific options:

<core_count>
<physical-cores>8</physical-cores>
<processors>2</processors>
</core_count>
<cpufreq>
<frequency>2667<frequency>
</cpufreq>
<memory_bandwidth_stream>
<bandwidth>5500</bandwidth>
</memory_bandwidth_stream>
<mflops_intel_mkl>
<mflops>64000</mflops>
</mflops_intel_mkl>

Similarly, the configuration file for the 5160-based cluster contains the following processor specific options:

<core_count>
<physical-cores>4</physical-cores>
<processors>2</processors>
</core_count>
<cpufreq>
<frequency>3000<frequency>
</cpufreq>
<memory_bandwidth_stream>
<bandwidth>6000</bandwidth>
</memory_bandwidth_stream>
<mflops_intel_mkl>
<mflops>39000</mflops>
</mflops_intel_mkl>

The configuration options can be merged into a single configuration file by utilizing the groups capability of Intel® Cluster Checker:

<core_count>
<group name="x5355">
    <physical-cores>8</physical-cores>
</group>
<group name="5160">
    <physical-cores>4</physical-cores>
</group>
<processors>2</processors>
</core_count>
<cpufreq>
<group name="x5355">
    <frequency>2667</frequency>
</group>
<group name="5160">
    <frequency>3000<frequency>
</group>
</cpufreq>
<memory_bandwidth_stream>
<group name="x5355">
    <bandwidth>5500</bandwidth>
</group>
<group name="5160">
    <bandwidth>6000</bandwidth>
</group>
</memory_bandwidth_stream>
<mflops_intel_mkl>
<group name="x5355">
    <mflops>64000</mflops>
  </group>
<group name="5160">
    <mflops>39000</mflops>
</group>
</mflops_intel_mkl>

Note that the processors option in the core_count configuration is outside a group container. That tells Intel® Cluster Checker to verify that both clusters have 2 processors per node.

Setting up the configuration file to use groups is only one half. You must also tag the nodes in your nodefile. For the X5355-based cluster:

node1 # group: x5355
node2 # group: x5355
node3 # group: x5355
...

You can also use this technique to mix different types of nodes in the same cluster. For example, configuring Intel® Cluster Checker for a 5160-based cluster with one X5355 node uses the same configuration file and the following nodefile: