This month, Virginia Tech announced that they would be building one of the Top Supercomputers in the world from approximately 1,100 of
Apple's new Dual 2.0GHz PowerMac G5s. As expected, this
drew the interest of the Apple and Tech communities.
The following represents some extensive notes of a September 4th, 2003 information session on the project which was held at the Donaldson
Brow$
Center auditorium.
Bracketed comments represent comments of the note-taker.
PART II of presentation
VT Op. Center will be staffed 24-7
Facility
- 3 MW power, double redundant with backups - UPS and diesel
- 1.5 MW reserved for the TCF
- 2+ million BTUs of cooling capacity using Liebert's extreme density cooling (rack mounted cooling via liquid refrigerant)
- traditional methods [fans] would have produced windspeeds
of 60+ MPH
--insert photos of cool stuff here - facilities, a G5, cooling rack set up
- Racks were custom designed for this system
Usage
- dual usage - production and experimental
- experimental operations will not interfere with production use
CSE Research Avenues
- nanoelectronics
- quantum chemistry
- computational chemistry/biochemistry
- fluid dynamics
- etc, etc, etc
PART III
Services [Offered at the Facility]
- code development assistance
- general support
- grant writing support
- [missed an item here]
Code Development Assistance
- HCSE
- Code kitchens w/apple and others
- FDI - expanding research tracks
Housed in AISB Machine Room
- Sysadmins will be available 24/7/365
- Tiered support
- Grant writing support
- Marketing and Business Rev[something.. enue?]
Official presentation ended here, begin Q and A!
How long would it take to parallelize the code?
- Highly application dependent - can build in an afternoon or take weeks/months
- duties of the management node can be covered by any of the four head nodes
- The system is a distributed memory machine, not a shared memory machine
- If 2 battling applications - no interference in terms of communication
What kind of physical security for the facility?
- access to the building via keycard
- access to the machine room determined via biometrics
Online material concerning the project?
Not at this time; probably up later today or late tonight
Does it render?
Yes, incidentally, it does. The units came with high end graphics cards
Plans to connect with The CAVE?
Maybe.
Source of funding for the project?
From different colleges within the university.
Are there limitations on the level of complexity that the
system can be used for?
Not yet fully considered, but no web servers and no hosting an irc network
Why so secret?
Project started back in February; secret with Dell because of the pricing issues; dealt with vendors individually because bidding wars do
not drive the prices down in this case