A Comparision of Job Duration Utilizing High Performance Computing on a Distibuted Grid

Members: Michael Austin, JerNettie Burney, and Robyn Evans
Mentor: Je'aime Powell
Key Words: ANOVA, binary, cluster, jobs, Linux, MATLAB®, node, Polar Grid, ssh, TORQUE

The Polar Grid team was taksed with testing the central manager system on Elizbeth City State University to ensure that it was prepared for grid computing. This was achieved by installing the Condor 7.4.0 client on iMac workstations computers located in Dixon Hall, Lane Hall, and E.V. Wilkins on the campus of Elizabeth City State University. Condor allowed jobs to be submitted to the central manager and distributed to one or more nodes. The job that the team submitted to Condor was compiled Sieve of Eratosthenes iin C++ code. This code generated prime numbers from 0 to 500,00 and was essential in testing the job submission process. The compiled code that was used in the script files was submitted to the central manager through Condor. These jobs were then distributed to available nodes for processing.

After each successful job submission, log files were created to record statistical data. The data was of the elapsed time it took to process each individual job. The data from these tables were imported to Minitab, which was a statistical analysis software package. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was then performed to determine if the elapsed times of the submissions varied within a 5 percent level of significance. From ANOVA, statistical evidence proved that by increasing the number of nodes, the elapsed time would decrease; therefore showing a performance increase.