# What's New

## Index

- SLURM Version 0.6, September 2005
- SLURM Version 1.0, January 2006
- SLURM Version 1.1, May 2006
- SLURM Version 1.2 and beyond

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 0.6

SLURM Version 0.6 became available in September 2005. Major enhancements include:

- Support for Infiniband
- Support for configurable resource limit propagation.
- MPI support moved into plugin (substantive configuration changes required for MPICH-GM).
- Srun options can be specified in job script (#SLURM ...)
- Names (not just numbers) for job step identification.

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.0

SLURM Version 1.0 became available in January 2006. Major enhancements include:

- I/O streams for all tasks on a node are transmitted through a single socket instead of distinct sockets for each task. This improves performance and scalability.
- Task affinity for binding tasks to CPUs.
- Nodes can be in multiple partitions, providing more flexibility in managing the SLURM partitions as queues.
- Support for task communication/synchronization primitives (PMI) as required by MPICH2.
- E-mail notification option on job state changes.
- Better control over task distribution (hostfile support).
- User control of job prioritization via nice option.
- Web-based configuration tool.
- Support to preempt/resume jobs.
- Support for deferred job initiation time specification.
- Compute node job shepherd now exec'ed program, slurmstepd. This eliminates use of SysV shared memory and some problems in support of the Native Posix Thread Library.
- Several bug fixes in interface with Maui Scheduler.
- For Blue Gene systems: support for small bglblocks.

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.1

We expect to make SLURM Version 1.1 available in May 2006. Major enhancements include:

- Communications enhancements, validated up to 16,384 node clusters.
- More complete support for resource management down to the core level on a node.
- File broadcast support.
- The configuration parameter HeartBeatInterval is defunct. Half the values of configuration parameters SlurmdTimeout and SlurmctldTimeout are used as the commununication frequency for the slurmctld and slurmd daemons respecitively.
- Support added for xcpu job launch.
- Add support for overlapping BlueGene blocks.
- Add support for 1/16 midplane BlueGene blocks.

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.2 and beyond

Detailed plans for release dates and contents of future SLURM releases have not been finalized. Anyone desiring to perform SLURM development should notify slurm-dev@lists.llnl.gov to coordinate activies. Future development plans includes:

- Permit resource allocations (jobs) to change size.
- Enforce CPU and memory limits by job.
- Convert state save functions to plugins for use of various databases.
- Develop Perl API to SLURM.
- Add Kerberos credential support including credential forwarding and refresh.

Last modified 30 January 2006