Re: starting out with pdfs, MPI and kernel_example.m!

If you had to manually lamboot, then something went wrong. The pelican_setup script lamboots for you, and kernel_example should run without problems with any number of MPI ranks. You can run "pelican_restarthpc" at any time to determine how many compute nodes are ready, and to lamboot them.

You can log into the compute nodes with the username "user" and the password that you set. There is really no reason to do so, though. As a single user tool, access through the frontend node is sufficient.

The way MPI ranks are run on the nodes of the cluster depends on how things are set up, and on the application. There is a lot of flexibility here, and much of the fun of parallel programming is figuring out how to make things run efficiently. There is a lot to learn here.

My research cluster is 64 bit. These days, it doesn't make sense to use anything else for number crunching, if you're buying new machines. I don't know the linpack specs for it, haven't tried.