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IU PARTNERS WITH COMPAQ TO DEVELOP NEW HIGH-PERFORMANCE
PARALLEL COMPUTING SYSTEM BASED ON PC TECHNOLOGY
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University announced today (May 12) that it has developed in conjunction with Compaq a new high-performance parallel computing system for computationally intensive scientific and research applications.
The significance of this system is that it is based purely on a cluster of commodity PC technology and provides supercomputer levels of performance at a fraction of the cost.
"This cluster provides an important new computational tool at Indiana University that complements in significant ways IU's already formidable supercomputing resources," said Michael McRobbie, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer.
"Our partnership with Compaq has led to a remarkably flexible system that will allow IU scientists and researchers to run applications under both Microsoft's NT operating system and the open source Linux operating system," he added.
"Indiana University has underscored its leadership in scientific computing with the deployment of this cluster," said Don Weatherson, vice president-government, education and medical for Compaq Computer Corp. "Using a platform of Compaq's ProLiant servers which can run multiple operating systems, the university is providing the ideal environment for fostering the development of open-standard high-performance computing technologies. Compaq is very pleased to support IU in this initiative."
The cluster comprises 32 Compaq Proliant servers, each equipped with a pair of 400 MHz Pentium II processors. The IU cluster is already supporting a number of significant scientific and artistic applications. The cluster has been used for calculations in quantum chromodynamics, a field that elementary particle physicists believe describes one of the four fundamental forces of physics.
It has also been used to support virtual reality and medical volume visualization applications. Here, the cluster provides greater levels of interactivity than previously feasible.
The cluster has also been used in artistic applications, such as rendering videos for IU's public television station. Use of the cluster has cut the time required to render videos by a factor of 10. UITS staff have also done significant research in characterizing the performance of various software tools for PC clusters.
Other projects now under way include astrophysics and the modeling of binary star formation, computational fluid dynamics in engineering, groundwater flow modeling in environmental sciences, and computer science research in grid-based computing.
The cluster has a theoretical peak performance of 25.6 GFLOPS, or 25.6 billion floating point operations per second. The servers in the system have dual interconnects: a fast ethernet network and a Gigabit ethernet network. This dual interconnect permits performance experiments and also allows for optimal tuning for applications that may involve quickly passing small messages across the Gigabit ethernet network, while simultaneously moving files across the fast ethernet network.
Compaq will work with IU in the continuing development of this cluster through regular technical exchanges and meetings.
IU is a partner in the National Computational Science Alliance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the addition of the cluster at IU will allow a considerable expansion of collaboration between IU and NCSA. IU and the alliance will be collaborating on joint experiments using geographically distributed PC clusters including the one at IU and others in NCSA.
"A very important feature of IU's cluster is its ability to run the Linux and Microsoft NT operating systems interchangeably," said Craig Stewart, director of research and academic computing at IU.
IU currently is comparing the performance of the leading parallel computing benchmarks on the Parallel PC Cluster running under NT as compared to Linux. "The question is never which is best," said Stewart. "The question is under what circumstances is one particular combination of operating systems and hardware the best choice. By working with both major operating systems for Intel-based PCs, IU will be adding significantly to understanding of the utility of this type of computing architecture."
IU is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and one of the largest universities in the United States, with more than 100,000 students, faculty and staff on eight campuses. IU hosts the network operations center for Abilene, an Internet2 backbone network for research and education, announced by Vice President Al Gore in 1998.
More recently, the National Science Foundation awarded IU a $10 million grant to develop the international high-performance research and education network connection called TransPAC between the United States and the Asia Pacific Rim. For more information on the Web, go to http://www.indiana.edu
Compaq Computer Corp., a Fortune Global 100 company, is the second-largest computer company in the world and the largest global supplier of computer systems. Compaq develops and markets hardware, software, solutions and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, networking and communication products, commercial desktop and portable products, and consumer PCs. The company is an industry leader in environmentally friendly programs and business practices. Compaq products are sold and supported in more than 100 countries through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners. For more information on Compaq, go on the Web to http://www.compaq.com
(Karen Adams, UITS, 812-856-5596, kadams@indiana.edu)