Slurm is an open-source workload and resource manager. To extend the functionality of Slurm, you can use plugins that offer diverse job types, workflows, and policies. Plugins can add a wide range of features, including resource limit management and accounting, as well as support for advanced scheduling algorithms.
Slurm is used for workload management on six of the ten most powerful computing systems in the world, including Tianhe-2 with 3,120,000 computing cores, and Piz Daint, a system that utilizes over 5,000 NVIDIA GPGPUs.
Slurm supports the use of GPUs via the concept of Generic Resources (GRES)—these are computing resources associated with a Slurm node, which can be used to perform jobs. Slurm provides GRE plugins for many types of GPUs.
Here are several notable features of Slurm:
Scales to tens of thousands of GPGPUs and millions of cores.
Offers military-grade security and no single point of failure.
Supports a heterogeneous configuration that allows users to leverage GPGPUs.
Provides topology-aware job scheduling, which can enable maximum system utilization.
Enables advanced reservations, backfill, suspend/resume, fair-share, and preemptive scheduling for critical jobs.