ITaP sets faculty meeting to discuss new community cluster
ITaP research computing staff will hold a meeting with faculty members Friday, May 20, to discuss the hardware and prices offered by prospective vendors for components in the new community cluster supercomputer to be built later this summer.
ITaP will use feedback from the meeting, set for 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Room 2058 at Rawls Hall, to generate a consensus on the final specifications for the new cluster.
In addition, the timeline for taking faculty orders for access to the new cluster and for building it will be discussed at the meeting. The cluster should be running in the fall.
Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to Community-clusters@purdue.edu if you plan to attend.
This will be the fourth community cluster ITaP and faculty partners have developed in as many years. The first three clusters increased Purdue’s research computing capacity by more than 10 times. All appeared on the TOP500 list of supercomputers worldwide. The Community Cluster Program was recognized with an international Campus Technology Innovators Award in 2010.
Through community clustering, ITaP pools internal and external funds to make more computing power available for Purdue research projects than faculty and campus units could afford individually. Vendors have provided significant price breaks on the large orders the clusters represent.
ITaP’s Rosen Center for Advanced computing installs, administers and maintains the community cluster systems, including security and user support, so researchers can concentrate on doing research rather than on running a high-performance computing system.
Community clustering also maximizes the use of resources by sharing computing power researchers use only part of the time with their peers, who can make use of it during what might otherwise be idle time. Researchers always have ready access to the capacity they purchase, and potentially more if they need it.
Like the other clusters, the new cluster is being named for a prominent figure in Purdue research computing history. The Hansen cluster will recognize the late Arthur G. Hansen, Purdue’s eighth president, who was a strong supporter of high-performance computing resources at the University.