Purdue University

ITaP and Purchasing announce a pilot program designed to give researchers at Purdue rapid access to new computational hardware.

The program also allows faculty and staff to test a variety of systems before making purchases. Since the equipment prices have been pre-negotiated, the program can reduce researchers’ “time to science” on purchases from weeks to days.

Sun Microsystems will maintain a small inventory at Purdue that can be made available to purchasers almost immediately. Larger orders should typically take just a few days for delivery. The equipment can be supported by Purdue’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing as a build-to-order cluster or shipped to a researcher’s specified location.

The initial program offers high performance Sun systems configured for both compute- and data-intensive needs. These systems are available for testing and purchase through the Rosen Center. Faculty and staff members who decide to purchase any of these models will be able to do so at a reduced price under the program involving Purdue, Sun reseller Dewpoint and Sun.

The Rosen Center has set up a four-node cluster of Sun Fire X2220s that’s available for testing.

Other machines can be set up quickly by request. Researchers who test a machine are under no purchase obligation, nor do they have to test to buy.

For information on the models available through the Rosen Center visit: www.rcac.purdue.edu/hardwarepurchase/sun.cfm.

For more information, email rcac-help@purdue.edu.

The Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC) is the research and discovery arm of Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), the University's central information technology organization. RCAC supplies reliable and secure high performance computing systems and storage to faculty and staff. This allows researchers doing computationally intensive cutting-edge science, engineering and social science research to concentrate on their work rather than maintaining a computer system.