NEWS BRIEFS
Columbus, OH — OSC (Ohio Supercomputer Center) has announced a strategic affiliation with KAI Software, a division of Intel Corporation, to further expand its statewide software licensing program.
Dr. Dave Kuck, an Intel Fellow and general manager of KAI Software, and OSC management discussed details of the software package agreement at a January 24 press conference. Al Stutz, director of High Performance Computing at OSC, also announced that the statewide software licensing agreement, which includes KAI, will be used for OSC’s Cluster Ohio Project.
KAI Software is a worldwide leader in computer optimization and parallelization. KAI will provide software such as Fortran 77, 90, C, C++, OpenMP, and MPI for the Cluster Ohio Project.
“Intel is pleased to be working with OSC on the Cluster Ohio Project and we at the KAI division look forward to interactions on a variety of interesting high performance computing projects,” according to Intel’s Dr. Kuck.
“The KAP/Pro Toolset is one of the industry’s most respected software development suites,” said Stutz. “KAI worked with OSC to develop a statewide license model that is unique. Now, every Ohio faculty member or student will be able to access all the products from KAI.”
OSC’s statewide software licensing program is an integral part of its Cluster Ohio Project, an initiative of OSC and the Ohio Board of Regents. OSC’s effort to encourage faculty to build local clusters is the first of its kind in the U.S. Clusters are being implemented throughout the state to allow for greater sharing of computing cycles across more Ohio colleges and universities.
There are four facets of the Cluster Ohio Project:
1. Late this spring, OSC will announce a hardware grant program for Ohio faculty to receive four-processor or two-processor cluster computing systems. Fifty-eight systems will be awarded, complete with on-site maintenance and software.
2. OSC will continue to expand the statewide software-licensing program to support cluster construction and use.
3. OSC will provide training and administrative advice for any academic cluster.
4. OSC will encourage cluster “owners” to join their cluster with the OSC Itanium’ Cluster to be installed at OSC in May. Initially, this will be 160 64-bit processors. OSC will house the largest academic cluster in the Cluster Ohio Project. In Autumn 2001, an additional 160 processors will be added.
Stutz added, “OSC’s relationship with software vendors such as KAI Software will encourage faculty to build local clusters for software development and testing and then use the OSC system for large science simulation.”
For more than a decade, OSC has been Ohio’s flagship center for high performance computing and networking. OSC’s goal is nothing less than to make Ohio the education and technology state of the future. Networking and high performance computing (HPC) are the Center’s core divisions with education and technology policy initiatives rounding out the organization.
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