Lafayette Online » Information technology at Purdue

Purdue builds Big Ten’s biggest computer, again

Carolyn Shelby — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:53:56 +0000

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue is acting as if building world-class supercomputers is the newest college sport.

For the second year in a row, Purdue will build what is expected to be the Big Ten’s largest campus computer, and as before, it will be running jobs by the end of the day.

Purdue University is installing the Big Ten's largest supercomputer, which will be built from more than 10,000 processors, or cores. To celebrate the new computer and the speed of its unique high-speed internal connections, Purdue produced a short video, Cores, which spoofs the Pixar hit Cars. (Purdue image /Michele Rund)

“Last year we unboxed the components for our Steele supercomputer in the morning and we were doing science in the afternoon,” says Gerry McCartney, chief information officer and vice president for information technology. “We expect to do the same thing with Coates, even though it is significantly larger.”

“Coates,” the new supercomputer, will be built from more than 10,000 computer cores, or processors, versus Steele’s 6,500 cores.

Coates is also expected to be the first internationally ranked academic supercomputer that is wired solely by superfast ten-gigabit network connections—allowing it to more easily handle the large amounts of data produced by research areas such as climate modeling and weather forecasting.

“Building supercomputers and other infrastructure needed for science and engineering is business as usual at Purdue,” McCartney says. “We have developed both a business model and an operational method that allows us to build world-class computers to meet the increasing demand from our researchers.”

On July 21, more than 200 information technology staff from Purdue will gather to construct the room-sized machine. They are expected to be joined by colleagues from the universities of Michigan and Iowa, as well Michigan State University and cross-state rival Indiana University, who will be observing and participating in the construction.

To generate excitement on Purdue’s campus and elsewhere, the IT staff created a parody movie trailer, “Cores,” which is a take off on the Pixar movie hit “Cars.” The video can be seen below.

Coates is expected to rank in the top 50 supercomputers worldwide when the next ranking is published in November. Supercomputers are ranked according to an agreed-upon benchmarking system, and the list is published twice a year at http://www.top500.org

The Big Ten’s largest campus computer is currently at the University of Minnesota’s Supercomputing Institute, which was ranked 59th in the June 2009 list, eclipsing Steele, which topped the list in its first benchmarking for the November 2008 Top 500 list. In that ranking, Purdue’s Steele was the Big Ten’s largest computer, ranked 105th in the world.

Supercomputing technology progresses rapidly, however, and six months later, in the June 2009 Top 500 list, Steele has moved from 105th to 196th.

“Even with Purdue’s international reputation as a leader in high performance computing, Coates isn’t being built for bragging rights,” McCartney says. “Top scientists and engineers require world-class resources in order to do their research, and with Coates we have a computer that is both powerful and capable of crunching massive data sets.”

Coates will be built with 1,280 HP dual quad-core computer nodes using AMD processors, and Cisco and Chelsio network equipment. It is expected to have a peak performance of 90 teraflops.

“Purdue University has deployed one of the world’s largest 10 GbE low latency, high performance computing infrastructures for scientific research, and we are honored that this strategic thought leader chose Cisco Nexus data center switches for a research facility of this magnitude,” said Soni Jiandani, vice president of marketing for Cisco’s Server Access and Virtualization Group. “Cisco is pleased to partner with Purdue to efficiently use computing resources and enable researchers to push the boundaries of science.“

Coates, like Steele, is being built as a “community cluster,” in which faculty on campus contributed research funds to fund the purchase, says John Campbell, associate vice president for Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue.

“Besides the cost savings from making a group purchase, the faculty can borrow computing cycles from other faculty when the other clusters are idle,” Campbell says. “This gives the researchers more flexibility, and we also have unused computing cycles we can offer to the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid.”

The new cluster is being named for Clarence L. “Ben” Coates, head of Purdue’s School of Electrical Engineering (now Electrical and Computer Engineering) from 1973 to 1983. Coates retired in 1988 and died in 2000 at age 76. Coates was a driving force behind high performance computing at Purdue.

“Naming our research clusters after former Purdue IT leaders gives us a way to recognize the contributions of these great people,” McCartney says.

Student filmmakers win top prizes at Purdue’s 6th annual Digital Cinema Contest

Carolyn Shelby — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:03:14 +0000

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Five students received the top prizes at the Purdue University Digital Learning Collaboratory’s sixth annual Digital Cinema Contest Premiere Night and Awards Ceremony on Thursday (April 17) at Wabash Landing 9 theater.

Awards were given for best documentary, alternative, animated, and narrative film, along with a viewer’s choice. Those chosen for best actor, actress, cinematography, sound design, special features and director also were recognized.

“The Shelter,” submitted by Mathhew Byori Mann, a senior in film and video studies from Champaign, Ill., won three awards – Best Narrative, Best Cinematography (by Dan Skubal), and Best Director.

Another film earned two awards. “Story Never Written” by Alex Donkle, a junior in acoustical engineering from Valparaiso, Ind., was recognized for Best Alternative Film and received the award for Best Special Features.

Other winners in the film category were “Bug Bowl” by Aaron Black, a senior majoring in psychology from Aurora, Ind., for Best Documentary; “Ara” by Tyler Kupferer, a senior in computer graphics technology from Columbus, Ind., for Best Animation; and “Unnoticeable Flying Object (UFO)” by Don Han, a senior in computer graphics technology from Seoul, South Korea, for Viewer’s Choice.

Individual awards included John Cessna, a 2007 alumnus of the film and video studies program at Purdue and a current MFA student in studio arts, who was recognized for Best Actor in the film, “We’ll Miss You.” Andrea Morales, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts, from West Lafayette, Ind. received Best Actress for her role in “A Dreamer’s Rendezvous” (trailer). Paul Laux, a senior in film and video studies from South Bend, Ind., won Best Sound Design.

Prizes for the top winners included software packages, a digital camera, and cash. Local restaurants and retailers supplied other prizes.

The filmmakers and their crews arrived at the theater in limousines.

“The whole production was first class,” noted Kevin O’Shea, contest organizer and coordinator of the Digital Learning Collaboratory (DLC). “We were very impressed with the caliber of this year’s entries and enjoyed having this opportunity to recognize the talent and hard work of these students.”

The contest is presented annually by the DLC in the John W. Hicks Undergraduate Library at Purdue University. The DLC is a joint initiative of Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP) and the Purdue University Libraries.

“We hope the students see this contest as a learning opportunity,” said John Fritch, associate professor of library science and the DLC’s reference and instruction librarian. “Several of the top winners are studying film or animation at Purdue, and this contest gives them the opportunity to showcase their work and be recognized for it.” The DLC offers access to film editing software packages and instruction, video and computer equipment, and DLC staff members provided feedback during “pitch nights” on the development of each film.

For a complete list of winners and to view the submitted films, please visit www.dlc.purdue.edu.

Student filmmakers win top prizes at Purdue’s 6th annual Digital Cinema Contest

Carolyn Shelby — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:03:14 +0000

Prizes for the top winners included software packages, a digital camera, and cash. Local restaurants and retailers supplied other prizes.

The filmmakers and their crews arrived at the theater in limousines.

For a complete list of winners and to view the submitted films, please visit www.dlc.purdue.edu.

ITaP services restored yesterday after major outage

Carolyn Shelby — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:57:57 +0000

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — ITaP services, including OnePurdue, SSINFO, Banner, and Blackboard Vista, were restored yesterday (Tuesday, April 15) after being unavailable off and on following an outage Sunday.

Most services were back up by 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Technicians report that ITaP’s virtualized SAN central file storage environment has experienced problems, resulting in the recent wide-spread outages of services and applications.

A virtualized SAN allows a collection of different kinds of physical storage devices to act and appear as one kind of storage that supports ITaP applications and services. The infrastructure that makes this virtualization possible has been operational at Purdue for about a year, and ITaP technicians report it has had minimal issues.

Mike Rubesch, executive director for IT Systems and Operations, says, “The quick actions of the IT staff to shut down failing components prevented the loss of data and transactions.”

More than 60 IT staff have been working in shifts around-the-clock to troubleshoot, recover data, restore services, and mitigate the impact of the outages. They have been working with 10 technical consultants flown in by the vendor and dozens of other support staff around the world to resolve this issue.

Vice President for Information Technology and CIO Gerry McCartney says, “ITaP staff came together quickly and effectively to minimize the impacts of the outages. I appreciate the sustained and professional efforts of many over the last few days.”

Now that services are restored, ITaP will take steps to prevent future issues with the SAN environment. This may involve moving crucial services like Banner, SAP, and Blackboard Vista from the virtualized SAN environment onto alternate storage systems.

Jeff Whitten, vice president of IT Enterprise Applications, says, “We understand how frustrating it is to lose access to information applications and services. We are deeply appreciative to faculty, staff, and students for their patience, and for helping us understand priorities as we strived to recover vital applications and services as quickly as possible.”

For updated information on the availability of ITaP services, browse to http://www.itap.purdue.edu/infrastructure/operations/change/calendar.cfm.

To receive outage notification system alerts about specific applications and services, go to http://www.itap.purdue.edu/infrastructure/operations/change and follow the link “Service Notification Sign Up.”

Lafayette Online » Information technology at Purdue

Purdue builds Big Ten’s biggest computer, again

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Student filmmakers win top prizes at Purdue’s 6th annual Digital Cinema Contest

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