SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing

15 SP4

Release Notes

SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing is a highly-

scalable, high-performance open-source operating system designed to utilize
the power of parallel computing. This document provides an overview
of high-level general features, capabilities, and limitations of SUSE Linux
Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 and important product
updates.
These release notes are updated periodically. The latest version of these
release notes is always available at https://www.suse.com/releasenotes .
General documentation can be found at https://documentation.suse.com/sle-
hpc/15-SP4 .

Publication Date: 2022-05-11, Version: 15.400000000.20220511

Contents
1 About the release notes 3

2 SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 3

3 Modules, extensions, and related products 7

4 Technology previews 8

5 Modules 10

6 Changes affecting all architectures 11

7 Removed and deprecated features and packages 12

8 Obtaining source code 14

1 Release Notes
 9 Legal notices 14

A Changelog for 15 SP4 15

2 Release Notes
1 About the release notes
These Release Notes are identical across all architectures, and the most recent version is always
available online at https://www.suse.com/releasenotes .
Entries are only listed once but they can be referenced in several places if they are important
and belong to more than one section.
Release notes usually only list changes that happened between two subsequent releases. Certain
important entries from the release notes of previous product versions are repeated. To make
these entries easier to identify, they contain a note to that eect.
However, repeated entries are provided as a courtesy only. Therefore, if you are skipping one
or more service packs, check the release notes of the skipped service packs as well. If you are
only reading the release notes of the current release, you could miss important changes.

2 SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance

Computing
SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing is a highly scalable, high performance
open-source operating system designed to utilize the power of parallel computing for modeling,
simulation and advanced analytics workloads.
SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 provides tools and libraries
related to High Performance Computing. This includes:

Workload manager

Remote and parallel shells

Performance monitoring and measuring tools

Serial console monitoring tool

Cluster power management tool

A tool for discovering the machine hardware topology

System monitoring

A tool for monitoring memory errors

A tool for determining the CPU model and its capabilities (x86-64 only)

3 Release Notes
 User-extensible heap manager capable of distinguishing between dierent kinds of memory
(x86-64 only)

Serial and parallel computational libraries providing the common standards BLAS,
LAPACK, …

Various MPI implementations

Serial and parallel libraries for the HDF5 le format

2.1 Hardware Platform Support

SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 is available for the Intel 64/
AMD64 (x86-64) and AArch64 platforms.

2.2 Important Sections of This Document

If you are upgrading from a previous SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing
release, you should review at least the following sections:

Section 2.4, “Support statement for SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing”

2.3 Support and life cycle

SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing is backed by award-winning support
from SUSE, an established technology leader with a proven history of delivering enterprise-
quality support services.
SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 has a 13-year life cycle, with 10
years of General Support and 3 years of Extended Support. The current version (SP4) will be
fully maintained and supported until 6 months after the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise for
High-Performance Computing 15 SP5.
Any release package is fully maintained and supported until the availability of the next release.
Extended Service Pack Overlay Support (ESPOS) and Long Term Service Pack Support (LTSS)
are also available for this product. If you need additional time to design, validate and test your
upgrade plans, Long Term Service Pack Support (LTSS) can extend the support you get by an
additional 12 to 36 months in 12-month increments, providing a total of 3 to 5 years of support
on any given Service Pack.

4 Release Notes
For more information, see:

The support policy at https://www.suse.com/support/policy.html

Long Term Service Pack Support page at https://www.suse.com/support/programs/long-

term-service-pack-support.html

2.4 Support statement for SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-

Performance Computing
To receive support, you need an appropriate subscription with SUSE. For more information, see
https://www.suse.com/support/programs/subscriptions/?id=SUSE_Linux_Enterprise_Server .
The following denitions apply:

L1
Problem determination, which means technical support designed to provide compatibility
information, usage support, ongoing maintenance, information gathering and basic
troubleshooting using available documentation.

L2
Problem isolation, which means technical support designed to analyze data, reproduce
customer problems, isolate problem area and provide a resolution for problems not
resolved by Level 1 or prepare for Level 3.

L3
Problem resolution, which means technical support designed to resolve problems by
engaging engineering to resolve product defects which have been identied by Level 2
Support.

For contracted customers and partners, SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing
is delivered with L3 support for all packages, except for the following:

Technology Previews, see Section 4, “Technology previews”

Sound, graphics, fonts and artwork

Packages that require an additional customer contract, see Section 2.4.1, “Software requiring
specific contracts”

5 Release Notes
SUSE will only support the usage of original packages. That is, packages that are unchanged
and not recompiled.

2.4.1 Software requiring specific contracts

Certain software delivered as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing
may require an external contract. Check the support status of individual packages using the RPM
metadata that can be viewed with rpm , zypper , or YaST.

2.4.2 Software under GNU AGPL

SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 (and the SUSE Linux Enterprise
modules) includes the following software that is shipped only under a GNU AGPL software
license:

Ghostscript (including subpackages)

SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 (and the SUSE Linux Enterprise
modules) includes the following software that is shipped under multiple licenses that include
a GNU AGPL software license:

MySpell dictionaries and LightProof

ArgyllCMS

2.5 Documentation and other information

2.5.1 Available on the product media

Read the READMEs on the media.

Get the detailed change log information about a particular package from the RPM (where
FILENAME.rpm is the name of the RPM):

rpm --changelog -qp FILENAME.rpm

6 Release Notes
 Check the ChangeLog le in the top level of the installation medium for a chronological
log of all changes made to the updated packages.

Find more information in the docu directory of the installation medium of SUSE Linux
Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4. This directory includes PDF versions
of the SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 Installation Quick
Start Guide.

2.5.2 Online documentation

For the most up-to-date version of the documentation for SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-
Performance Computing 15 SP4, see https://documentation.suse.com/sle-hpc/15-SP4 .

Find a collection of White Papers in the SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance
Computing Resource Library at https://www.suse.com/products/server#resources .

3 Modules, extensions, and related products

This section comprises information about modules and extensions for SUSE Linux Enterprise for
High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 Modules and extensions add functionality to the system.

3.1 Modules in the SLE 15 SP4 product line

The SLE 15 SP4 product line is made up of modules that contain software packages. Each module
has a clearly dened scope. Modules dier in their life cycles and update timelines.
The modules available within the product line based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4 at the
release of SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 are listed in the
Modules and Extensions Quick Start at https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP3/html/SLES-all/
article-modules.html .
Not all SLE modules are available with a subscription for SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-
Performance Computing 15 SP4 itself (see the column Available for).
For information about the availability of individual packages within modules, see https://
scc.suse.com/packages .

7 Release Notes
3.2 Available extensions
The following extension is not covered by SUSE support agreements, available at no
additional cost and without an extra registration key: SUSE Package Hub, see https://
packagehub.suse.com/ .

3.3 Related products

This sections lists related products. Usually, these products have their own release notes
documents that are available from https://www.suse.com/releasenotes .

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: https://www.suse.com/products/server

SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS: https://www.suse.com/products/server/jeos

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop: https://www.suse.com/products/desktop

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications: https://www.suse.com/products/sles-

for-sap

SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time: https://www.suse.com/products/realtime

SUSE Manager: https://www.suse.com/products/suse-manager

4 Technology previews
Technology previews are packages, stacks, or features delivered by SUSE which are not
supported. They may be functionally incomplete, unstable or in other ways not suitable for
production use. They are included for your convenience and give you a chance to test new
technologies within an enterprise environment.
Whether a technology preview becomes a fully supported technology later depends on customer
and market feedback. Technology previews can be dropped at any time and SUSE does not
commit to providing a supported version of such technologies in the future.
Give your SUSE representative feedback about technology previews, including your experience
and use case.

8 Release Notes
4.1 64K page size kernel flavor has been added
SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing for Arm 12 SP2 and later kernels have
used a page size of 4K. This oers the widest compatibility also for small systems with little
RAM, allowing to use Transparent Huge Pages (THP) where large pages make sense.
As a technology preview, SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing for Arm
15 SP4 adds a kernel avor 64kb , oering a page size of 64 KiB and physical/virtual address
size of 52 bits. Same as the default kernel avor, it does not use preemption.
Main purpose at this time is to allow for side-by-side benchmarking for High Performance
Computing, Machine Learning and other Big Data use cases. Contact your SUSE representative
if you notice performance gains for your specic workloads.

Important: Swap needs to be re-initialized

After booting the 64K kernel, any swap partitions need to re-initialized to be usable. To
do this, run the swapon command with the --fixpgsz parameter on the swap partition.
Note that this process deletes data present in the swap partition (for example, suspend
data). In this example, the swap partition is on /dev/sdc1 :

swapon --fixpgsz /dev/sdc1

Important: Btrfs file system uses page size as block size

It is currently not possible to use Btrfs le systems across page sizes. Block sizes below
page size are not yet supported and block sizes above page size might never be supported.
During installation, change the default partitioning proposal and choose another le
system, such as Ext4 or XFS, to allow rebooting from the default 4K page size kernel of
the Installer into kernel-64kb and back.
See the Storage Guide for a discussion of supported le systems.

Warning: RAID 5 uses page size as stripe size

It is currently not yet possible to congure stripe size on volume creation. This will lead
to sub-optimal performance if page size and block size dier.
Avoid RAID 5 volumes when benchmarking 64K vs. 4K page size kernels.

9 Release Notes
 See the Storage Guide for more information on software RAID.

Note: Cross-architecture compatibility considerations

The SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing 15 SP4 kernels on x86-64
use 4K page size.
The SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing for POWER 15 SP4 kernel
uses 64K page size.

5 Modules

5.1 HPC module

The HPC module contains HPC specic packages. These include the workload manager Slurm,
the node deployment tool clustduct , munge for user authentication, the remote shell mrsh ,
the parallel shell pdsh , as well as numerous HPC libraries and frameworks.
This module is available with the SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing only.
It is selected by default during the installation. It can be added or removed using the YaST UI
or the SUSEConnect CLI tool. Refer to the system administration guide for further details.

5.2 NVIDIA Compute Module

The NVIDIA Compute Module provides the NVIDIA CUDA repository for SUSE Linux Enterprise
15. Note that that any software within this repository is under a 3rd party EULA. For more
information check https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/eula/index.html .
This module is not selected for addition by default when installing SUSE Linux Enterprise
for High-Performance Computing. It may be selected manually during installation from the
Extension and Modules screen. You may also select it on an installed system using YaST. To do
so, run from a shell as root yast registration , select: Select Extensions and search for
NVIDIA Compute Module and press Next .

10 Release Notes
 Important
Do not attempt to add this module with the SUSEConnect CLI tool. This tool is not yet
capable of handling 3rd party repositories.

Once you have selected this module you will be asked to conrm the 3rd party license and verify
the repository signing key.

6 Changes affecting all architectures

Information in this section applies to all architectures supported by SUSE Linux Enterprise for
High-Performance Computing 15 SP4.

Important
These release notes only document changes in SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-
Performance Computing compared to the immediate previous service pack of SUSE Linux
Enterprise for High-Performance Computing. The full changes and xes can be found on
the respective web site of the packages.

6.1 dolly
dolly has been updated to version 0.63.6. It includes some xes for hostname resolution, a
better documentation and now provides a default conguration for rewall.

6.2 memkind
memkind has been updated to version 1.12.0. The full list of changes is available at http://
memkind.github.io/memkind/ .

6.3 openblas
openblas has been updated to version 0.3.17. It contains performance regression xes
and optimization. For more information see https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS/releases/tag/
v0.3.17 .

11 Release Notes
6.4 spack
spack has been updated to version 0.17.1. It now includes support to build singularity
containers from https://registry.suse.com/ .

6.5 mpich
mpich has been updated to version 3.4.2. For more information see https://
www.mpich.org/2021/05/28/mpich-3-4-2-released/ .

6.6 Creating containers from current HPC environment

Usually users use environment modules to adjust their environment (that is, environment
variables like PATH , LD_LIBRARY_PATH , MANPATH etc.) to pick exactly the tools and libraries
they need for their work. The same can be achieved with containers by including only those
components in a container that are part of this environment. This functionality is now provided
using the spack and singularity applications.

7 Removed and deprecated features and packages

This section lists features and packages that were removed from SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-
Performance Computing or will be removed in upcoming versions.

7.1 Removed features and packages

The following features and packages have been removed in this release.

12 Release Notes
 Python 2 bindings for genders has been removed. These are now provided for Python 3.

Ganglia is not supported anymore in 15 SP4. It has been replaced with Grafana (https://
grafana.com/ )

Due to a lack of usage by customers, some library packages have been removed from the
HPC module in SLE HPC 15 SP4. On SUSE Linux Enterprise you can build your own library
using spack . These libraries will continue to be available through SUSE Package Hub.
The following libraries have been removed:

boost

adios

gsl

fftw3

hypre

metis

mumps

netcdf

ocr

petsc

ptscotch

scalapack

superlu

trilinos

7.2 Deprecated features and packages

The following features and packages are deprecated and will be removed in a future version of
SUSE Linux Enterprise for High-Performance Computing.

13 Release Notes
8 Obtaining source code
This SUSE product includes materials licensed to SUSE under the GNU General Public
License (GPL). The GPL requires SUSE to provide the source code that corresponds to the
GPL-licensed material. The source code is available for download at https://www.suse.com/
download/sle-hpc/ on Medium 2. For up to three years after distribution of the SUSE
product, upon request, SUSE will mail a copy of the source code. Send requests by e-mail
to sle_source_request@suse.com (mailto:sle_source_request@suse.com) . SUSE may charge a
reasonable fee to recover distribution costs.

9 Legal notices
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entity of such revisions or changes.
Further, SUSE makes no representations or warranties with regard to any software, and
specically disclaims any express or implied warranties of merchantability or tness for any
particular purpose. Further, SUSE reserves the right to make changes to any and all parts of SUSE
software, at any time, without any obligation to notify any person or entity of such changes.
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to https://www.suse.com/company/legal/ for more information on exporting SUSE software.
SUSE assumes no responsibility for your failure to obtain any necessary export approvals.
Copyright © 2010-2022 SUSE LLC.
This release notes document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License (CC-BY-ND-4.0). You should have received a copy of the license along
with this document. If not, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ .

14 Release Notes
SUSE has intellectual property rights relating to technology embodied in the product that is
described in this document. In particular, and without limitation, these intellectual property
rights may include one or more of the U.S. patents listed at https://www.suse.com/company/
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For SUSE trademarks, see the SUSE Trademark and Service Mark list (https://www.suse.com/
company/legal/ ). All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

A Changelog for 15 SP4

A.1 2022-05-11

A.1.1 New

Added this changelog

A.2 2022-03-23

A.2.1 New

Added Section 6.6, “Creating containers from current HPC environment” (Jira (https://
jira.suse.com/browse/SLE-12352) )

Added notes about dolly , memkind , openblas , spack , and mpich in Section 6, “Changes
affecting all architectures”

Added note about Ganglia being unsupported in Section 7, “Removed and deprecated features
and packages” (Jira (https://jira.suse.com/browse/SLE-17777) )

Added note about removal of Python 2 bindings for genders (Jira (https://jira.suse.com/
browse/SLE-23359) )

15 Release Notes
A.2.2 Updates

Added a note about building libraries using spack in Section 7, “Removed and deprecated
features and packages” (Jira (https://jira.suse.com/browse/SLE-17776) )

Added adios and superlu to the list of removed libraries in Section 7, “Removed and
deprecated features and packages”

A.3 2021-11-03

Initial SP4 release

16 Release Notes