# What's New

## Index

- SLURM Version 1.1, May 2006
- SLURM Version 1.2, February 2007
- SLURM Version 1.3, March 2008
- SLURM Version 1.4, May 2009
- SLURM Version 1.5 and beyond

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.1

SLURM Version 1.1 became available in May 2006. Major enhancements include:

- Communications enhancements, validated up to 16,384 node clusters.
- File broadcast support (new sbcast command).
- Support for distinct executables and arguments by task ID (see srun --multi-prog option).
- Support for binding tasks to the memory on a processor.
- The configuration parameter HeartbeatInterval is defunct. Half the values of configuration parameters SlurmdTimeout and SlurmctldTimeout are used as the communication frequency for the slurmctld and slurmd daemons respectively.
- Support for PAM to control resource limits by user on each compute node used. See UsePAM configuration parameter.
- Support added for xcpu job launch.
- Add support for 1/16 midplane BlueGene blocks.
- Add support for overlapping BlueGene blocks.
- Add support for dynamic BlueGene block creation on demand.
- BlueGene node count specifications are now c-node counts rather than base partition counts.

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.2

SLURM Version 1.2 became available in February 2007. Major enhancements include:

- More complete support for resource management down to the core level on a node.
- Treat memory as a consumable resource on a compute node.
- New graphical user interface provided, sview.
- Added support for OS X.
- Permit batch jobs to be requeued.
- Expanded support of Moab and Maui schedulers.
- Srun command augmented by new commands for each operation: salloc, sbatch, and sattach.
- Sched/wiki plugin (for Moab and Maui Schedulers) rewritten to provide vastly improved integration.
- BlueGene plugin permits use of different boot images per job specification.
- Event trigger mechanism added with new tool strigger.
- Added support for task binding to CPUs or memory via cpuset mechanism.
- Added support for configurable power savings on idle nodes.
- Support for MPICH-MX, MPICH1/shmem and MPICH1/p4 added with task launch directly from the srun command.
- Wrappers available for common Torque/PBS commands (psub, pstat, and pbsnodes).
- Support for Globus (using Torque/PBS command wrappers).
- Wrapper available for mpiexec command.

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.3

SLURM Version 1.3 was released in March 2008. Major enhancements include:

- Job accounting and completion data can be stored in a database (MySQL, PGSQL or simple text file).
- SlurmDBD (Slurm Database Deamon) introduced to provide secure database support across multiple clusters.
- Gang scheduler plugin added (time-slicing of parallel jobs without an external scheduler).
- Cryptography logic moved to a separate plugin with the option of using OpenSSL (default) or Munge (GPL).
- Improved scheduling of multiple job steps within a job's allocation.
- Support for job specification of node features with node counts.
- srun's --alloc, --attach, and --batch options removed (use salloc, sattach or sbatch commands instead).
- srun --pty option added to support remote pseudo terminal for spawned tasks.
- Support added for a much richer job dependency specification including testing of exit codes and multiple dependencies.

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.4

SLURM Version 1.4 is scheduled for released in May 2009. Major enhancements include:

- Idle nodes can now be completely powered down when idle and automatically restarted when their is work available.
- Jobs in higher priority partitions (queues) can automatically preempt jobs in lower priority queues. The preempted jobs will automatically resume execution upon completion of the higher priority job.
- Specific cores are allocated to jobs and jobs steps in order to effective preempt or gang schedule jobs.
- A new configuration parameter, PrologSlurmctld, can be used to support the booting of different operating systems for each job.

## Major Updates in SLURM Version 1.5 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 activities. Future development plans includes:

- Permit resource allocations (jobs) to change size.
- Add Kerberos credential support including credential forwarding and refresh.

Last modified 13 November 2008