WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The 2009-10 Purdue Boilermaker men’s basketball conference schedule was announced on earlier today (Wednesday). The Boilers are slated to appear live on the Big Ten Network 11 times in the regular season and on the various ESPN channels no less than 12 times.

Purdue University head coach Matt Painter (R) talks to Purdue guard E'Twaun Moore during the second half of their Big Ten mens basketball tournament game versus the University of Illinois in Indianapolis March 14, 2008. REUTERS/Brent Smith (UNITED STATES)

“The Big Ten is going to be as good as it’s been in a number of years,” head coach Matt Painter said. “We have a lot of teams returning experienced players. There will be no easy games on the schedule once we get into league play. I think we have a number of teams who feel like they can make a run at winning the league and advancing in the NCAA Tournament.”

The conference slate is comprised again this year of 18 regular-season games. Purdue plays Northwestern and Michigan once, but will face the other eight conference schools twice.

The Boilermakers open up conference play on the road by traveling to Iowa City, Iowa, on Dec. 29 to take on the Hawkeyes at 7 p.m. ET on the Big Ten Network. Purdue returns home for its final non-conference regular-season game against West Virginia at 2:30 p.m. on New Year’s Day on ESPN.

“We’re excited about our schedule for the 2009-10 season,” Painter said. “We feel like we’ve got some great games in the non-conference portion of the schedule that will help prepare our guys for the rigors of the Big Ten season. We also feel like we have some great games on the home-slate for our fans, which is always important.”

Four days later the Boilermakers take on Minnesota, Jan. 5 at 7 p.m. in Mackey Arena. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2. There are four more home games in January: Ohio State (Jan. 12 – 7 p.m. ESPN), Michigan (Jan. 23 – 4 p.m. ESPN), Wisconsin (Jan. 28 – 9 p.m. ESPN2) and Penn State (Jan. 31 – 3 p.m. Big Ten Network). Purdue’s road contests are Wisconsin (Jan. 9 – 5:30 p.m. Big Ten Network), Northwestern (Jan. 16 – 5:30 p.m. Big Ten Network) and Illinois (Jan. 19 9 p.m. ESPN).

Purdue will face Indiana twice this season. The first contest is on Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. in Bloomington and will broadcast on ESPN2. The teams meet in West Lafayette either March 2, 3 or 4. Game time and television coverage will be announced when the date is finalized.

After starting the month of February at Indiana, the Boilermakers will play at Michigan on Feb. 9 at 9 p.m. on ESPN, in East Lansing, Mich. Purdue then plays host to Iowa on Feb. 13 at 4:30 p.m. on the Big Ten Network and is on BTN the following game at Ohio State on Feb. 17 at 6:30 p.m.

The Illinois matchup in Mackey Arena will be played either Feb. 20 or 21, followed by a game at Minnesota on Feb. 24 at 8:30 p.m. on the Big Ten Network. Purdue’s final three regular season game dates will be finalized at a later time. Michigan State at home will be either Feb. 27 or 28, Indiana on March 2, 3 or 4 and at Penn State on March 6 or 7.

The 13th annual Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament will be played Thursday, March 11 through Sunday, March 14 at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. All 10 games will air nationally on ESPN, ESPN2, the Big Ten Network and CBS Sports. ESPN2 will carry the first two games on Thursday and the Big Ten Network will air the final game of the evening. On Friday, ESPN will broadcast the first two quarterfinal games while the Big Ten Network will air the remaining two contests. CBS Sports will televise the semifinal and championship games on Saturday and Sunday.

Purdue season tickets are on sale and are available online at purduesports.com, by calling the Athletic Ticket Office at 800-49-SPORT or in person at the ticket office in the Intercollegiate Athletic Facility.

The deadline for priority seating is Aug. 28.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Twenty-seven Purdue student-athletes were honored as Distinguished Scholar Award recipients by the Big Ten Conference on Wednesday.

The award was established by the Big Ten Faculty Representatives in February in order to supplement the Academic All-Big Ten program. In order to be eligible for the Distinguished Scholar Award, recipients must be in at least their second academic year at the institution and have a minimum GPA of 3.7 for the previous academic year, excluding summer school.

Of Purdue’s 27 recipients, six posted a perfect 4.0 GPA this year. Those individuals are bolded on the complete list below.

The Academic All-Big Ten threshold is a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher for their academic career. A total of 150 Boilermaker student athletes garnered Academic All-Big Ten honors during the 2008-09 school year. Purdue’s Distingushed Scholar Award recipients follow.

• Katie Beck, Women’s Swimming & Diving
• David Colturi, Men’s Swimming & Diving
• Scott Dean, Men’s Swimming & Diving
• Matthew DeSilva, Men’s Track & Field
• Danielle Eagan, Women’s Cross Country
• Laura Garriga, Women’s Basketball
• Nan Hammel, Women’s Track & Field
• Joe Holland, Football
• Liane Horiuchi, Softball
• Christine Inman, Women’s Swimming & Diving
• Alex Jaffee, Baseball
• Morgan Lebsack, Women’s Swimming & Diving
• Ashlee Lengacher, Women’s Track & Field
• Luke Manuel, Wrestling
• Danita Merlau, Women’s Volleyball
• Lauren Mioton, Women’s Basketball
• Katie Morrical, Women’s Track & Field
• Tom Oliver, Men’s Golf
• Mallory Peck, Women’s Track & Field
• Loredana Riverso, Soccer
• Kaitlin Seeger, Soccer
• Connor Sestak, Baseball
• Allie Smith, Women’s Swimming & Diving
• Eric Sparks, Men’s Track & Field
• Rachel Stalzer, Women’s Track & Field
• Matt Stewart, Men’s Swimming & Diving
• Mark Wohlford, Men’s Basketball

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Staff members at Purdue University had hoped to build the Big Ten’s largest campus supercomputer in just a day on Monday, May 5.

But it didn’t take that long — they were done by lunch.

Purdue computer technicians put the finishing touches on Steele, a new supercomputer that is among the largest in the world. Staff members at the university were challenged to build the supercomputer in a day, but finished the job by lunchtime. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

“The assembly was finished much faster than we expected, and by noon we were doing science,” says Gerry McCartney, vice president for information technology and chief information officer. “The staff was enthusiastic, the weather was great, and there were no problems installing the hardware or software. There is no cloud to accompany this silver lining.”

By 1 p.m. more than 500 of the 812 nodes that make up the supercomputer were already running 1,400 research jobs from across campus.

The supercomputer, which is named “Steele” for John Steele, former staff and faculty member, is made up of 812 Dell servers and is capable of performing 60 trillion operations per second. The supercomputer would rank in the top 40 of the current ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, and is the largest supercomputer on a Big Ten campus that is not a part of a national center.

A time-lapse video of the supercomputer construction is available via YouTube: Supercomputer assembly at Purdue University

The first shift of workers was scheduled to begin unpacking boxes at 7 a.m., but many employees arrived at 6 a.m., eager to begin working. By 11 a.m. the supercomputer was essentially complete except for a few nodes that were intentionally held back to be installed at the noon dedication.

“We discovered that a build like this leverages the commodity nature of cluster computing, by using standard computing parts,” McCartney said. “By using commodity computer servers to build our supercomputer, we didn’t have to fly in engineers or hire specialized technicians. We were able to do it with our own IT staff in about four hours.”

Indiana University, Purdue’s rival on the athletic fields, surprised the Purdue IT staff by sending a crew of technicians to help build the machine.

Matt Link, director of research technology systems at IU, says he was pleased to be a part of the event.

“We often collaborate with people from Purdue on research proposals by videoconferencing, but we don’t routinely get the opportunity to work together in person,” Link said. “Our meeting today was enjoyable and will serve to strengthen future collaborations between IU and Purdue.”

The supercomputer was funded by Purdue faculty members who contributed research funds instead of purchasing equipment for their own laboratories.

Ashlie Martini, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and one of the faculty who helped fund the project, will use the computer’s power to study friction at the molecular level. She watched the technicians install the nodes in the data center.

“The great thing about this approach is that almost everything was done for us,” Martini said. “This was very efficient. I have nothing but good things to say about today.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The largest supercomputer on a Big Ten campus will be installed at Purdue in a single-day, electronic “barn-raising.”

More than 200 employees will gather May 5 to help build the massive machine, which will be about the size of a semitrailer when installed. It will be the largest Big Ten supercomputer that is not part of a national center.

Purdue’s computer is being built in a single day to keep the university’s science and engineering researchers from facing a lengthy downtime, says Gerry McCartney, vice president for information technology and chief information officer.

“Our staff thought we were insane when we challenged them to build such a big computer in a single day,” McCartney says. “But now there’s real excitement to be a part of this.”

To generate interest on campus, the organizers created a spoof movie trailer called “Installation Day,” which is a take off of the movie “Independence Day.” The video can be seen on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVzThRN4QJI

Supercomputers are ranked by their performance in running a complex benchmarking system. The results of the tests are published twice each year at http://www.top500.org. Purdue’s new supercomputer would rank in the top 40 of the current Top 500 list, which was published in Nov. 2007.

The current campus leader in supercomputing in the Big Ten is Indiana University’s Big Red, which ranks 42nd in the world. (The National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ “Abe” cluster, which is based in Urbana, Ill. and operated by the University of Illinois, offers computing resources to researchers across the nation and is the largest supercomputer installed at a Big Ten university.)

The world’s largest supercomputer is BlueGene/L, which is located at Lawrence Livermore (Calif.) National Laboratory.

The Purdue supercomputer will consist of 812 Dell dual quad-core computer nodes and is predicted to have a peak performance of more than 60 teraflops, which means it could perform more than 60 trillion operations in one second.

Read the full story

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The largest supercomputer on a Big Ten campus will be installed at Purdue in a single-day, electronic “barn-raising.”

More than 200 employees will gather May 5 to help build the massive machine, which will be about the size of a semitrailer when installed. It will be the largest Big Ten supercomputer that is not part of a national center.

Purdue’s computer is being built in a single day to keep the university’s science and engineering researchers from facing a lengthy downtime, says Gerry McCartney, vice president for information technology and chief information officer.

“Our staff thought we were insane when we challenged them to build such a big computer in a single day,” McCartney says. “But now there’s real excitement to be a part of this.”

To generate interest on campus, the organizers created a spoof movie trailer called “Installation Day,” which is a take off of the movie “Independence Day.” The video can be seen on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVzThRN4QJI

Supercomputers are ranked by their performance in running a complex benchmarking system. The results of the tests are published twice each year at http://www.top500.org. Purdue’s new supercomputer would rank in the top 40 of the current Top 500 list, which was published in Nov. 2007.

The current campus leader in supercomputing in the Big Ten is Indiana University’s Big Red, which ranks 42nd in the world. (The National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ “Abe” cluster, which is based in Urbana, Ill. and operated by the University of Illinois, offers computing resources to researchers across the nation and is the largest supercomputer installed at a Big Ten university.)

The world’s largest supercomputer is BlueGene/L, which is located at Lawrence Livermore (Calif.) National Laboratory.

The Purdue supercomputer will consist of 812 Dell dual quad-core computer nodes and is predicted to have a peak performance of more than 60 teraflops, which means it could perform more than 60 trillion operations in one second.

Read the full story