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Link to section 'Overview of Brown' of 'Overview of Brown' Overview of Brown

Brown is a Community Cluster optimized for communities running traditional, tightly-coupled science and engineering applications. Brown was built through a partnership with Dell and Intel in October 2017. Brown consists of Dell compute nodes with two 12-core Intel Xeon Gold "Sky Lake" processors (24 cores per node) and 96 GB of memory. All nodes have 100 Gbps EDR Infiniband interconnect and a 5-year warranty.

To purchase access to Brown today, go to the Cluster Access Purchase page. Please subscribe to our Community Cluster Program Mailing List to stay informed on the latest purchasing developments or contact us via email at rcac-cluster-purchase@lists.purdue.edu if you have any questions.

Link to section 'Brown Namesake' of 'Overview of Brown' Brown Namesake

Brown is named in honor of Herbert C. Brown, Nobel Laureate and Professor of Chemistry. More information about his life and impact on Purdue is available in a Biography of Brown.

Link to section 'Brown Specifications' of 'Overview of Brown' Brown Specifications

All Brown nodes have 24 processor cores, 96 GB of RAM, and 100 Gbps Infiniband interconnects.

Brown Front-Ends
Front-Ends Number of Nodes Processors per Node Cores per Node Memory per Node Retires in
No GPU 4 Two Sky Lake CPUs @ 2.60GHz 24 96 GB 2023
Brown Sub-Clusters
Sub-Cluster Number of Nodes Processors per Node Cores per Node Memory per Node Retires in
A 550 Two Sky Lake CPUs @ 2.60GHz 24 96 GB 2023

Brown nodes run CentOS 7 and use Slurm (Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management) as the batch scheduler for resource and job management. The application of operating system patches occurs as security needs dictate. All nodes allow for unlimited stack usage, as well as unlimited core dump size (though disk space and server quotas may still be a limiting factor).

On Brown, the following set of compiler, math library, and message-passing library for parallel code are recommended:

  • Intel 17.0.1.132
  • MKL
  • Intel MPI

This compiler and these libraries are loaded by default. To load the recommended set again:

$ module load rcac

To verify what you loaded:

$ module list

Link to section 'Software catalog' of 'Overview of Brown' Software catalog