Acquisition of an Advanced Workstation Cluster for High Performance Computing in Physics

采购用于物理高性能计算的先进工作站集群

• 批准号: 9977582
• 负责人: Stanley Hirschi
• 金额: $ 13.27万
• 依托单位: Central Michigan University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-01 至 2002-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9977582&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Acquisition; Advanced; Workstation; Cluster; Performance

9977582HirschiWith support from the Major Research Instrumentation program, a parallel array of high performance workstations will be acquired. These will be used to improve the scientific computational capability in the Department of Physics at Central Michigan University. Eight SMP workstations comprising sixteen DEC Alpha 21264 processors will be linked using a fast system area network (SAN). Parallelization on the array will be accomplished using MPI, the Message Passing Interface. This cluster will provide a theoretical peak performance of about 32 GFLOPS at an estimated cost of $6/MFLOPS. The cluster will meet critical hardware needs of three very active research groups in physics at Central Michigan University. These groups conduct computationally intensive research in materials and cluster physics (2 groups) and in nuclear structure physics (1 group). A polymer fluid dynamics group, which includes faculty from the departments of chemistry, physics, and mathematics, will also benefit from the use of this new capability. At present these groups use a variety of individual workstations, of which only one has a performance approaching 1 GFLOPS. Thus, the new array will increase the available peak computing power by at least a factor of 30. Such a performance enhancement will permit these groups at CMU to attack exciting new research problems involving larger and more complex systems. The planned parallel array of high performance workstations will also afford important new training opportunities for undergraduate and M.S. students at CMU in the area of parallel computing. A parallel array of high performance workstations will be acquired with support from the Major Research Instrumentation program. This array will provide increased computing power for both research projects and research training of M.S. level and undergraduate students, and thus will have a large impact on the infrastructure at CMU.

9977582 hirlings与主要研究仪器计划的支持下，高性能工作站的并行阵列将被收购。 这些将用于提高中密歇根大学物理系的科学计算能力。 由16个DEC Alpha 21264处理器组成的8个SMP工作站将通过一个快速系统局域网（SAN）连接起来。 阵列的并行化将使用MPI（消息传递接口）完成。该集群将提供约32 GFLOPS的理论峰值性能，估计成本为6美元/MFLOPS。 该集群将满足中密歇根大学三个非常活跃的物理研究小组的关键硬件需求。 这些小组在材料和团簇物理学（2个小组）以及核结构物理学（1个小组）方面进行计算密集型研究。 一个聚合物流体动力学小组，其中包括来自化学，物理和数学系的教师，也将受益于使用这种新的能力。 目前，这些小组使用各种单独的工作站，其中只有一个工作站的性能接近1 GFLOPS。 因此，新阵列将使可用峰值计算能力至少增加30倍。 这样的性能增强将允许CMU的这些团队攻击涉及更大和更复杂系统的令人兴奋的新研究问题。计划中的高性能工作站并行阵列也将为本科生和硕士提供重要的新培训机会。CMU的学生在并行计算领域。在主要研究仪器计划的支持下，将获得一批高性能工作站。 该阵列将为MS的研究项目和研究培训提供更高的计算能力。因此，这将对CMU的基础设施产生重大影响。