Main differences between ARCHER and ARCHER2

This section provides an overview of the main differences between ARCHER and ARCHER2 along with links to more information where appropriate.

For all users

• You use the new SAFE rather than the ARCHER SAFE
• You can add multiple SSH keys to your ARCHER2 account using SAFE
• There are 128 cores on an ARCHER2 compute node rather than 24
• ARCHER2 usage is charged in CUs (Compute Units) rather than kAU
  • Generally: 1.5156 kAU = 4.21 ARCHER node hour = 1 ARCHER2 node hour = 1 CU
• ARCHER2 uses the Slurm scheduler instead of PBS Pro
  • See: Running jobs on ARCHER2
• Parallel applications are launched using srun rather than aprun
• You cannot currently query your budget on ARCHER2 itself, you can view your budget using SAFE

For users compiling and developing software on ARCHER2

• The Intel compilers are not available on ARCHER2
  • ARCHER2 supports the Cray, Gnu and AMD compilers
  • See: Application development environment
• Intel MKL libraries are not available on ARCHER2
  • Use Cray LibSci for BLAS/LAPACK/ScaLAPACK
  • Use FFTW for FFTs
• All binaries on ARCHER2 are dynamically linked
  • Static linking is currently not possible on ARCHER2
  • This means that all binaries must be installed on the /work file systems as these are the only file systems available on the compute nodes