What is ICE and how does it compare to marin?
Marin is the front end to a large shared memory system, whereas ICE (Integrated Computing Environment) is a cluster of networked computing nodes, each having their own separate memory space. Clusters are easier to scale up, and cost less than large shared memory computers. The new HPC systems are cooled with chilled water instead of air conditioning, making them “greener” in comparison to earlier hardware. Programming on clusters can be somewhat more complicated than on shared memory systems, because without shared memory, information must be communicated between processors by passing messages. Both marin and the ICE cluster use PBS (Portable Batch System) for scheduling jobs. On both systems, every PI receives a monthly allocation of 1000 CPU hours in the default job queue. The processors on ICE are faster than those on marin since the ICE system is newer. For example, an 8 processor NCBI blastn job that took 29 hours on marin finishes in 17 hours on ICE.
