Virginia Tech
System X Takes on the Grand Challenge
Meeting the Grand Challenge. Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, director of Virginia Tech’s Terascale Computing Facility, stands in front of System X, a cluster of 1,100 Xserve G5s.
Virginia Tech gained international honors for building the fastest supercomputer at any academic institution in the world. And they did it using Power Mac G5s. From that milestone, Virginia Tech has moved ahead again with System X, a new cluster using 1,100 Xserve G5s.
Ranking seventh in the Top 500 list of the world’s most powerful computer systems, System X was built at a fifth of the cost of the second-least expensive system in the top 10.
“When we built the first supercomputer from Power Mac G5s, we proved that a radically-different communications technology could be used to create a large-scale computing platform,” says Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, director of the university’s Terascale Computing Facility and the system’s lead designer.
“We’re recognized for knowing how to build these terascale computing machines — and with very good price performance.
“But the measure of the facility is the kind of science it produces.”
Meeting the Grand Challenge
The Xserve-based supercomputer is part of Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, where scientists tackle multi-disciplinary, “grand challenge” problems in science and engineering — large-scale problems such as computational fluid dynamics, molecular modeling, nanoelectronics, quantum chemistry, computational biology and large-scale network emulation.
From left to right: Dr. Kevin Shinpaugh, director of research and cluster computing; Jason Lockhart, associate director of the Terascale Computing Facility; Patricia Arvin, associate vice president for information technology; Dr. Glenda Scales, assistant dean of engineering for research computing; Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, director of the Terascale Computing Facility.
“Simulating the physics inside a molecule or the interactions among atoms in a material science application requires huge amounts of computation and data,” says Dr. Cal Ribbens, associate professor of computer science. “And the results of the simulation demand that the computations be very tightly coupled, because the answer in one part of the simulation depends on the answer in another part. So not only do you need very powerful computers, you need them connected by a very fast network.
“That’s what the Apple Xserve cluster provides.”
Teraflops to Spare
Virginia Tech moved to the Xserve G5 cluster for several reasons, but primarily because of its server-optimized architecture, groundbreaking performance and innovative management tools.
“The Xserve cluster was a perfect alternative for us because of its computational capability, reliability and responsiveness,” says Dr. Varadarajan.
With dual 64-bit, 2.3GHz G5 processors in each of its 1,100 Xserve G5 units, the new cluster operates at 12.25 teraflops.
Dr. Varadarajan considers the Xserve’s PowerPC processor ideal: “Its floating-point performance matches or exceeds that of Intel’s Itanium2 solution.”
The On-Campus Supercomputer
“We’ve put a state-of-the-art, ahead-of-the-curve machine here for our research faculty to use and they’re very excited about having the Macs here.” says Dr. Terry Herdman, director of research computing.
“Only a handful of universities have a world-class supercomputing resource,” confirms Dr. Kevin Shinpaugh, Virginia Tech’s director of research and cluster computing. “Before, our faculty members would have to go to a National Science Foundation [NSF] center, for instance, and write a proposal to get time on these machines.”
Since the demand for NSF machines is very high, says Dr. Shinpaugh, “a scientist could sit in line for six months just to get access. Then they may not get as many compute hours as they really needed. Having a resource at Virginia Tech gives them quick access to a large system for world-class science.”
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