October 23, 2007

Purdue students to compete in national supercomputing contest

The Purdue team, made up of students in Jeff Evans' high-performance computing course in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology, will participate in the competition. The Cluster Challenge is part of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, referred to as Supercomputing 2007 (SC07).

The students spent several weeks assembling the HP DL 145 high-performance computer cluster they will use in the competition, said team leader Preston Smith, a graduate student in computer and information technology and a staff member at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing. They will use a special truck to transport the 19-inch computer cluster to Nevada.

High-performance computing involves linking standard PCs to form a Linux cluster, which is a group of computers that work together to operate as a single computer. The result is a supercomputer that is able to perform complex tasks.

Cluster Challenge computers will be judged on the speed of benchmarks and the throughput of application runs over the first three days of the conference. The teams will test and tune their machines until the green flag drops on Nov. 12. The teams will then be given data sets, or a "problem," to solve. Teams will be judged on the amount of data they can process and the amount of power they use. The team with the most points will win.

Smith said competitors will be given three different computing tasks: a chemistry problem, a climate data problem and frames of a movie or animation that they will have to render. He said teams will receive much more data than they will be able to process, but the objective is to process as much as possible using the least amount of power.

He said each team must use no more than 30 amps of power during the competition, and teams will be penalized for exceeding 26 amps. In comparison, one switch in a residential circuit breaker box – such as one that would control the electrical power to a room – has about 30 amps.

"The objective is to teach the students that while these computers are very powerful, can solve complex problems and handle a lot of data quickly, they do consume a lot of energy," Smith said.

Winners will be announced the evening of Nov. 15.

Purdue students involved in the competition and preparation are Andrew Howard, a junior from West Lafayette, Ind., majoring in electrical and computer engineering technology; David Matthews, a senior from Fort Wayne, Ind., majoring in electrical and computer engineering technology; Donghan Ryu, a senior from South Korea majoring in electrical and computer engineering; Josh Wildey, a senior from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, majoring in electrical engineering; Taesuk Yoon, a senior from South Korea majoring in computer science; Alex Younts, a freshman from Lafayette, Ind., majoring in computer science; Richard Miller, a senior from Lafayette, Ind., majoring in electrical and computer engineering technology; and Trent Nelson, a senior from Columbia City, Ind., majoring in computer engineering.

Ryan Pedela, a graduate student in computer graphics technology from West Chester, Ohio, will compete in a separate event called the Bandwidth Challenge.

Purdue's colleges of Technology, Engineering and Science are team sponsors, as well as Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices and Matrix Integration.

Writer: Kim Medaris, (765) 494-6998, kmedaris@purdue.edu

Sources:   Jeff Evans, (765) 494-7725, jje@purdue.edu

Preston Smith, (765) 494-9729, psmith@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page