November 27, 2007
Gift helps students learn how to assemble, maintain a high-performance computer
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A gift from Argonne National Laboratories in Chicago is enabling Purdue University students to get hands-on experience with high-performance computing.Students in Jeffrey Evans' high-performance computing class in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology are working this semester to assemble the VA Linux cluster computer that was once valued at about $1.25 million.
"As high-performance computing becomes more common in industry, it's essential for students to learn how these machines work and how to assemble, benchmark and manage them," Evans said. "This machine contains 236 dual-processor compute nodes, more than a dozen system management servers and disk arrays, and various networking components that must be linked together, so this is a great learning tool for students and definitely not something they've been exposed to before."
The cluster was built in late 1999 and was used at Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division until earlier this year, said Rick Bradshaw, senior systems administrator at the division. It was used for systems software, scalability and networking research purposes. It also was part of the Chiba City project, which created Argonne's largest supercomputing cluster dedicated to highly scalable, open-source software development. It was used by researchers around the country from universities, laboratories and industry.
Bradshaw said the original capability of the 8-year-old machine was about half a teraflop, or about 200 times more powerful than a standard personal computer.
"Although the machine is no longer of use to us for research purposes, it is valuable for teaching students about these systems," he said. "The cluster contains two networks - an Ethernet network and a low-latency network - so students are exposed to this, and they also learn parallel programming and systems management, which involves programming the nodes so they work as a single unit."
Evans said the cluster will be housed in the Michael Golden Laboratories and should be completed by the spring semester. In addition to teaching undergraduates and graduate students about high-performance computing, it will be used for applied research in several areas, including adaptive computing systems, nanomachining computer simulations, hydrologic science and forensic engineering technology.
Writer: Kim Medaris, (765) 494-6998, kmedaris@purdue.edu
Sources: Jeffrey Evans, (765) 494-7725, jje@purdue.edu
Rick Bradshaw, (630) 252-1498, bradshaw@mcs.anl.gov
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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