TeraGrid utilization at NCAR
This plot shows the total
CPU hours consumed by TeraGrid-specific jobs for each month in FY2008 for
frost, the Blue Gene/L TeraGrid computational resource. As was noted in the
"TeraGrid operations at NCAR" section of this report, the usage in the later
months are equivalent to about 20% of the total CPU hours available on the
machine (100% utilization would be between about 1.38M and 1.52M CPU hours
each month, depending on the number of days in that month).
By policy, 25% of frost is allocated for TeraGrid work. Historically, the
TeraGrid use of the machine has been much less. As users and projects slowly
added the frost resource to their allocation and began using the machine,
the monthy TeraGrid utilization increased, although still at relatively
low levels.
From August 2008 through September 2008, the TeraGrid utilization of frost dramatically increased. This increase was primarily due to actively migrating existing frost users to the TeraGrid. This sudden increase in TeraGrid activity since July actually represents a 90% utilization of frost's 25% TeraGrid allocation. In the most recent allocation, 773,000 CPU hours were allocated to TeraGrid users on frost.
The projects that have active allocations on frost have only used an average of 10% of their total project allocation, so the TeraGrid utilization of frost is expected to remain high throughout FY2009.
The acquisition and operation of frost was made possible through NSF MRI Grants CNS-0421498, CNS-0420873, and CNS-0420985; through the IBM Shared University Research (SUR) program with the University of Colorado; and NSF Core funding.