December 08, 2006
Indiana University (IU) has deployed Force10 Networks TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers to build a distributed, high performance cyberinfrastructure. In addition to IU's AVIDD and Big Red supercomputer clusters, the cyberinfrastructure includes the university's Data Capacitor, which provides researchers across the nation with a unique facility for temporary massive data storage. Indiana University serves as one of the nine partner sites in TeraGrid, an open scientific discovery infrastructure that integrates high performance computers, data resources, tools and leading experimental facilities around the country to create a persistent computational resource.
"To support broad research initiatives across our campuses as well as within the TeraGrid project, we needed an infrastructure that could deliver the flexibility and scalability that would allow us to interconnect our computing clusters as well as enable us to build new ones," said Matt Davy, chief network engineer at Indiana University. "Force10's 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet cards give us the flexibility to reconfigure our network as research projects demand without complicating the architecture while providing the scalability to add more computing capacity."
The Force10 TeraScale E-Series and the state of Indiana's I-Light network form the foundation of the high performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet network that connects IU's Indianapolis and Bloomington campuses, which are 55 miles apart. The Force10 TeraScale E-Series also serves as a "machine room backplane" for IU's two Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Facilities. Over this infrastructure, tools such as an open message passing interface (MPI) can be used to run MPI applications across multiple locations, supporting, for example, the use of Myricom protocols within one cluster and Gigabit Ethernet between clusters and campuses, using the long haul fiber optic capabilities of the TeraScale E-Series. The machine room backplane also allows researchers to utilize systems such as the IBM e1350 Blade Center Big Red cluster to generate massive amounts of data that can be stored on the Data Capacitor while awaiting analysis.
"Indiana University is a part of the research and education tradition that is committed to leveraging the most advanced technology to further research into complex problems," said Mark Cooper, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Force10 Networks. "The TeraScale E-Series provides the density and reliability Indiana requires to be on the forefront of computer science research."
In a recent solicitation, the NSF laid out needs for furthering its scientific and engineering infrastructure with new tools to go beyond top performance, Having already delivered systems like Stampede and Blue Waters, they're turning an eye to solving data-intensive challenges. We spoke with the agency's Irene Qualters and Barry Schneider about..
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Large-scale, worldwide scientific initiatives rely on some cloud-based system to both coordinate efforts and manage computational efforts at peak times that cannot be contained within the combined in-house HPC resources. Last week at Google I/O, Brookhaven National Lab’s Sergey Panitkin discussed the role of the Google Compute Engine in providing computational support to ATLAS, a detector of high-energy particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
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The Xeon Phi coprocessor might be the new kid on the high performance block, but out of all first-rate kickers of the Intel tires, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) got the first real jab with its new top ten Stampede system.We talk with the center's Karl Schultz about the challenges of programming for Phi--but more specifically, the optimization...
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May 22, 2013 |
At some point in the not-too-distant future, building powerful, miniature computing systems will be considered a hobby for high schoolers, just as robotics or even Lego-building are today. That could be made possible through recent advancements made with the Raspberry Pi computers.
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May 16, 2013 |
When it comes to cloud, long distances mean unacceptably high latencies. Researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany examined those latency issues of doing CFD modeling in the cloud by utilizing a common CFD and its utilization in HPC instance types including both CPU and GPU cores of Amazon EC2.
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May 15, 2013 |
Supercomputers at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) have worked on important computational problems such as collapse of the atomic state, the optimization of chemical catalysts, and now modeling popping bubbles.
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May 10, 2013 |
Program provides cash awards up to $10,000 for the best open-source end-user applications deployed on 100G network.
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05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.
04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.
In this demonstration of SGI DMF ZeroWatt disk solution, Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI CTO, discusses a function of SGI DMF software to reduce costs and power consumption in an exascale (Big Data) storage datacenter.
The Cray CS300-AC cluster supercomputer offers energy efficient, air-cooled design based on modular, industry-standard platforms featuring the latest processor and network technologies and a wide range of datacenter cooling requirements.