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.

In Related News:

• Purdue installs Big Ten’s biggest campus computer in just one day
• Purdue installs Big Ten’s biggest campus computer in just one day
• Purdue’s Steele supercomputer makes list of world’s most powerful systems
• Purdue supercomputer unboxed and built by lunchtime
• Purdue highlights cloud computing tools at supercomputing conference

News via Lafayette Indiana Online

Purdue builds Big Ten’s biggest computer, again

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.

A group of more than 25 university scientists and engineers pooled research grant funds to contribute to the purchase of the machine; less than 25 percent of the purchase is funded from the university’s IT budget.

“The community approach is a new and cost-effective way to fund cyberinfrastructure on campuses,” McCartney says. “This approach not only maximizes resources at Purdue, but researchers across the nation will benefit from the unused cycles which will be available on the TeraGrid.”

Rudolf Eigenmann, professor of electrical and computer engineering and interim director of Purdue’s Computing Research Institute, says the computer will be used for a wide variety of research.

“Faculty using this computer will be designing new drugs and materials, modeling weather patterns and the effects of global warming, engineering future aircraft, and making many more discoveries,” Eigenmann says. “High performance computing is an essential to conducting research and development, so having one of the world’s largest supercomputers here on campus will be a real benefit to our faculty.”

The three computing clusters that previously served university researchers were taken off-line and removed from the basement of Purdue’s Mathematics Building on April 28. A small number of the nodes for the new computer were then installed to serve as a “bridge” for continuing research until the new computer is fully installed.

An additional 154 nodes will be installed in Mann Hall. These nodes have already started practice computing runs for an international high-energy physics project that will begin this summer.

“We didn’t set out to acquire the largest supercomputer in the Big Ten. Our intent was to design a computer that would allow Purdue researchers to take the next step in discovery,” McCartney says.

The new computer will be named “Steele,” after John Steele, the former director of the Purdue University Computing Center, and a member of the Computer Science faculty, who retired in 2003.

“I appreciate that I can continue to be a part of high performance computing at Purdue and our efforts to remain at the forefront of this type of computing,” Steele says. “This machine will keep us on the high performance computing map.”

McCartney says Purdue plans to continue naming its major computers after faculty, staff or students who have made significant contributions to the university’s computing infrastructure.

“This isn’t the same as naming a building after someone; these machines have a lifecycle of about five years. But it is a way to salute members of the Purdue community who have worked so long and hard to help Purdue achieve the world-famous reputation it now enjoys,” McCartney says.

Purdue has a long history of leadership in information technology. In 1962, Purdue founded the first department of Computer Science. In 1967, Purdue became one of the first institutions to acquire a supercomputer, a Control Data Corp. 6500 (which had a performance of one-third of a megaflop). In 1982, Purdue.edu was the second URL registered for the Internet.

In Related News:

• Purdue installs Big Ten’s biggest campus computer in just one day
• Purdue supercomputer unboxed and built by lunchtime
• Purdue builds Big Ten’s biggest computer, again
• Purdue’s Steele supercomputer makes list of world’s most powerful systems
• Purdue employees, students can receive discount from AT&T

News via Lafayette Indiana Online

Purdue installs Big Ten’s biggest campus computer in just one day

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.

A group of more than 25 university scientists and engineers pooled research grant funds to contribute to the purchase of the machine; less than 25 percent of the purchase is funded from the university’s IT budget.

“The community approach is a new and cost-effective way to fund cyberinfrastructure on campuses,” McCartney says. “This approach not only maximizes resources at Purdue, but researchers across the nation will benefit from the unused cycles which will be available on the TeraGrid.”

Rudolf Eigenmann, professor of electrical and computer engineering and interim director of Purdue’s Computing Research Institute, says the computer will be used for a wide variety of research.

“Faculty using this computer will be designing new drugs and materials, modeling weather patterns and the effects of global warming, engineering future aircraft, and making many more discoveries,” Eigenmann says. “High performance computing is an essential to conducting research and development, so having one of the world’s largest supercomputers here on campus will be a real benefit to our faculty.”

The three computing clusters that previously served university researchers were taken off-line and removed from the basement of Purdue’s Mathematics Building on April 28. A small number of the nodes for the new computer were then installed to serve as a “bridge” for continuing research until the new computer is fully installed.

An additional 154 nodes will be installed in Mann Hall. These nodes have already started practice computing runs for an international high-energy physics project that will begin this summer.

“We didn’t set out to acquire the largest supercomputer in the Big Ten. Our intent was to design a computer that would allow Purdue researchers to take the next step in discovery,” McCartney says.

The new computer will be named “Steele,” after John Steele, the former director of the Purdue University Computing Center, and a member of the Computer Science faculty, who retired in 2003.

“I appreciate that I can continue to be a part of high performance computing at Purdue and our efforts to remain at the forefront of this type of computing,” Steele says. “This machine will keep us on the high performance computing map.”

McCartney says Purdue plans to continue naming its major computers after faculty, staff or students who have made significant contributions to the university’s computing infrastructure.

“This isn’t the same as naming a building after someone; these machines have a lifecycle of about five years. But it is a way to salute members of the Purdue community who have worked so long and hard to help Purdue achieve the world-famous reputation it now enjoys,” McCartney says.

Purdue has a long history of leadership in information technology. In 1962, Purdue founded the first department of Computer Science. In 1967, Purdue became one of the first institutions to acquire a supercomputer, a Control Data Corp. 6500 (which had a performance of one-third of a megaflop). In 1982, Purdue.edu was the second URL registered for the Internet.

In Related News:

• Purdue installs Big Ten’s biggest campus computer in just one day
• Purdue supercomputer unboxed and built by lunchtime
• Purdue builds Big Ten’s biggest computer, again
• Purdue’s Steele supercomputer makes list of world’s most powerful systems
• Purdue employees, students can receive discount from AT&T

News via Lafayette Indiana Online

Purdue installs Big Ten’s biggest campus computer in just one day