High Performance Computing for Academic Instruction Jerry Ciolkosz College of Engineering Penn State

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High Performance ComputingforAcademic
InstructionJerry CiolkoszCollege of
EngineeringPenn State University
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Most current HPC is used for

• Research
• Research
• Research

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Vision of the Academic Computing Committee

• Deployment of a high performance computing
  cluster with its primary mission being the
  support of academic instruction of undergraduate
  students

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Cluster Building 101

• Identify the problem you want to solve
• Build a cluster tailored to that problem
• Uh Oh..

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Research

• Gather input from faculty
• Look for other similar installations
• Input from the Academic Computing Committee
• 75 Courses identified as possible users

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A Different Approach

• If you build it, they will come

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Initial Proposals

• Apple
• Dell
• IBM
• GI

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Project Stalled

• Funding
• Departmental Buy-In
• Location with adequate power and cooling

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Interest Rekindled

• Discussions with Apple
• New funding cycle
• Installation site identified
• Target price 50,000

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Proposals - Round 2

• Apple
• Dell

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Proposals - Round 2

• Apple
• Dell

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Hardware

• 24 Dell PE 1425 dual dual core 3.4 GHz
• 4 GB RAM 40 GB Hard Drive
• 1 Dell PE 2800 dual dual core 3.4 GHz
• 8 GB RAM 1.4 TB Hard Drive
• Gigabit Ethernet interconnect

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The OS Platform Rocks

• Quick and easy clustering for neophytes
• Packaged with most of the tools we needed
• Free

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Prepackaged Tools

• Ganglia Monitoring
• Sun Grid Engine SGE scheduler
• Development Tools
• GNU Fortran and C Compilers
• Intel Fortran and C Compilers (available as a
  Rocks Roll)

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Additional Software

• Matlab
• Mathematica
• Fluent
• Comsol

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Signup
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User Access

• Kerberized login shadow accounts
• SSH
• X11 forwarding
• VNC not yet

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We built it, are they coming?

• Two undergrad courses currently signed up
• More interest by researchers
• Proposal for 256 node dual core cluster for
  Graduate education and research
• Time will tell

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Problem Areas

• Last minute changes
• User level support
• More interest from researchers
• Users doing stupid stuff
• Getting the word out

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Questions
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