High Performance Computing Resources

These pages provide information about a Linux cluster currently operating in the School of Chemistry.



The cluster is named "kirkland" after the first Professor of Chemistry in the school. It is primarily used to run the Gaussian03 software and complements facilities provided by the Melbourne Advanced Research Computing Centre.

Here is an application form for an account on the cluster. This form should be emailed to cluster admin.

The cluster is composed of a management node (Dell PowerEdge 2600 Server) and 23 compute nodes (Dell PowerEdge 400SC Server) connected via a managed gigabit ethernet switch (Dell PowerConnect 5224). Information about the cluster can be found here. The operating system is RedHat Linux 9.0. OpenPBS has been installed as the scheduling software.

The peak theretical performance of the cluster is ~123 GFlops. Preliminary testing reveals approximately ~60 GFlops via the linpack benchmark.

Need more information? Go to FAQ


For a quick refresher course on using unix, click here.

First time users of the cluster should read this and refer to CONDITIONS OF USE




For Unix and MacOS X users:

Access to the cluster is via 'ssh':

>  ssh -l [username] kirkland.chemistry.unimelb.edu.au
   
   {where [username] is your account name on the computer}


For Windows and MacOS classic users:

You will need to get a terminal client which is 'ssh' enabled. NCSA telnet will not work.

Windows:    ssh terminal client: PuTTY
                    secure FTP client: coreFTP

MacOS:    secure terminal and FTP clients: MacSSH/MacSFTP

Note: These are suggestions only. Any terminal/FTP client which is secure shell enabled will work.