Aquila - Hardware

Aquila is an SGI Altix 3000 with 160 Intel Itanium2 1.3 GHz processors (64 bit), each with 3 MB of L3 cache. It has 160 GB of RAM which can be shared between the processors in various ways - for example, as 160 processors each accessing 1 GB of RAM, or as 1 processor accessing 160 GB of RAM.

Aquila uses SGI's propriety NUMAlink interconnect fabric architecture for system communication. This is what gives the SGI Altix the ability to present itself as a single image machine with 160 processors and 160 GB of available RAM. This is quite different from our clustered systems.

Aquila has access to a pool of storage which is shared amongst several of SAPAC's facilities. Please see the Data Storage and Backups section of this User Guide for more detailed information.

In addition, Aquila has approximately 1 TB of local disk space for storing data and other files whilst a job is running. These files will be removed once a job has terminated. Remember that the local disk space is a shared resource used by all running jobs.

Note: If your job will require local disk space in excess of 10-20 GB contact the SAPAC helpdesk before you try to run the job.

Aquila User's Guide