Cortex

Cortex is a server used by VisLab for general (non-iCub) simulation purposes (by contrast, the iCubBrain servers are used for the iCub robot).

Old information can be consulted at Cortex/Archive.

Specifications

Since summer 2012, there is one machine (cortex1) with these specs:

• 8 x i7-3770K @ 3.50GHz processor
• 16GB of memory (sudo dmidecode --type 17 to see RAM speed and type)
• 112GB SSD drive
• NVidia GeForce GTX 670 graphics card (CUDA)

Operating system installation

In general, follow the guidelines at VisLab machines configuration. Below are some special notes.

TODO: update information below

Additional software

On this cluster, each user should manage his own yarp and iCub repositories. As a result, do not use system-wide installation of those (sudo make install): instead, simply use make and set your environment variables.

NVIDIA CUDA and Caffe (Deep Neural Network suite for Matlab)

On 12 September 2014 the CUDA Toolbox V6.0 was installed, along with the V331.62 NVIDIA driver. Everything seems to be working fine.

Caffe was built in a directory under Jacinto's home, its tests reporting:

 [==========] 718 tests from 154 test cases ran. (107744 ms total)
 [  PASSED  ] 718 tests.
 YOU HAVE 2 DISABLED TESTS

The disabled tests are possibly due to not having the required kind of hardware for them.

Customization

Network tuning

  sysctl -w net.core.rmem_max=8388608
  sysctl -w net.core.wmem_max=8388608
  sysctl -w net.core.rmem_default=65536
  sysctl -w net.core.wmem_default=65536
  sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_rmem='4096 87380 8388608'
  sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_wmem='4096 65536 8388608'
  sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_mem='8388608 8388608 8388608'
  sysctl -w net.ipv4.route.flush=1

Mounting network folders

The folder "database" on BlackHole is mounted automatically to /media/blackhole. See /etc/fstab for details.