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Purdue Cluster Challenge team starts fast

Purdue’s Cluster Challenge team started off fast at the SuperComputing ’08 Conference, held Nov. 15-21, 2008, in Austin, Texas.

As in 694 gigaflops fast.

That’s the score the Purdue team posted with the unusual SiCortex supercomputer it used in the competition. The score was posted running the HPC LINPACK benchmarking software — the first step for all the teams in the Cluster Challenge.

Purdue placed second in the benchmarking segment, behind only National Tsing Hua University of Taiwan, which posted a score of 703 gigaflops. A combined team from Indiana University and Dresden University in Germany was third with a score of 526 gigaflops. None of the other four teams topped 500.

Purdue's team consisted of Andy Howard, a senior in electrical and computer engineering technology from West Lafayette; Alex Younts, a sophomore in computer science from West Lafayette; David King, a senior in electrical and computer engineering technology from Lafayette; Paul Willmann, a senior in computer technology from Carmel; and Ryan Weinschenk, a senior in electrical and computer engineering technology from Noblesville.

The students were enrolled in a high-performance computing class taught by Jeffrey Evans, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology. Preston Smith, senior UNIX system administrator for Purdue's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, served as team leader.

Working in shifts, the team took part in a 44-hour marathon running simulated data in a battery of scientific applications relevant to fields ranging from genetics to designing jet airplanes. The teams were judged on their benchmarking score, the amount of data they could process with applications in the time allotted and their overall presentation, preparation and knowledge.

SiCortex builds supercomputers designed to deliver high performance using large numbers of slower processors that are energy-efficient, both in power consumption and the cooling they require. Among other things, the company uses a unique, very fast “interconnect fabric” — the wiring that links its processors for working in concert — offsetting the raw speed disadvantage.

The Rosen Center is the research-computing arm of ITaP, Purdue's central information technology organization, and it installed a top-of-the line SiCortex machine in June to test it from both performance and energy-saving perspectives, making Purdue the first university to do so. The SC1458 that the Cluster Challenge team is using is the next step down from the Rosen Center’s SC5832. In both cases, the numbers refer to the maximum number of processors the machines can contain.

Writer: Greg Kline, science and technology writer, ITaP, (765) 494-8167, gkline@purdue.edu

Photo caption: Purdue Cluster Challenge team members (l-r) Paul Willmann, Alex Younts, David King, Ryan Weinschenk and Andy Howard get started on the second phase of the competition — 44 hours of running simulated data in a variety of real scientific applications. Purdue placed a close second in the benchmarking phase.

Last updated: Nov. 18, 2008