From: Glenn Bresnahan <glenn@bu.edu>
Subject: IBM SP to go into production

Dear Researcher,

After a very successful Friendly User test period, we are ready to bring our IBM
SP system into production use for the entire community. Starting on Monday, July
23, the IBM SP system will be available to all researchers who have accounts on
the SGI system. After July 23 you will be able to access the SP using the same
login name and password that you use on our SGI systems.

While we have configured the IBM SP to be similar to the production SGI systems,
there are some significant differences. Please thoroughly read the documentation
on our SP before attempting to use the system. The following documents are
available on our Web site:
	http://scv.bu.edu/SCV/IBMSP.html      - IBM SP Information for SCF Users
	http://scv.bu.edu/SCV/IBMSP/FAQs.html - IBM SP FAQ
	http://scv.bu.edu/SCV/IBMSP           - BU SP Repository

Our SP is a 64-processor system, configured as four independent 16-processor
nodes. Like the SGI, one node has been designated for interactive logins, while
the remaining nodes are dedicated to batch. The processors in the nodes are
375MHz IBM Power3 processors, each with a theoretical peak speed of 1.5Gflops.
We have found that most applications run 2-3 times faster on the SP than on the
SGI Origin. Because of this difference in speed, we will be charging twice as
much per CPU for SP time, that is, each CPU hour on the SP will use two units
of your allocation.

As usual, any problems or questions on the use of the system may be sent to help
(help@hal.bu.edu). We are also planning to have a number of talks and a
workshop  on using the SP during the next few months.

We are very excited about bringing our newest machine into production and hope
you will be able to make good use of this resource in furthering your research.

Sincerely,

Glenn Bresnahan