Students to Help Build Supercomputer
Faculty and students of the USF computer science department will work together this year to build a parallel supercomputer, which will be one of the first of its kind at a liberal arts college.
The project is being funded by a $600,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation. In recognition of the grant, the supercomputer will be known as the Keck Cluster.
To build the supercomputer, more than 60 low-cost computers will be networked together to form a single parallel supercomputer far more powerful than the sum of its parts. The parallel supercomputer will be used for interdisciplinary undergraduate research.
The power of the supercomputer will lie in its synergy. Many crucial problems in science and engineering are out of reach to even the most advanced of conventional workstations. The only technology that has shown any promise of solving such problems is parallel computing—the harnessing of multiple computers to work simultaneously on a single problem.
Two members of the USF computer science faculty who are experts in parallel computing will oversee the project. They are Peter S. Pacheco, professor of mathematics and chair of the computer science department, and Gregory D. Benson, assistant professor of computer science.
The Keck Cluster will be one of the first large-scale parallel supercomputers at a liberal arts college. Access to this computational power will begin to close the gap that exists between what is being taught in universities and what is being done in modern research.
“Having this parallel supercomputer at USF will give our students a tremendous edge when they leave the university and enter the job market,” Pacheco said.
Faculty and students of other institutions will have access to all of the system application software that will be developed for the project. By building on the work of USF faculty and students, other universities should be able to reproduce smaller-scale versions of the supercomputer at a fraction of the cost.
In addition to providing USF computer science students with the opportunity to get hands-on experience building and working on the supercomputer, the project will also accelerate faculty and student research efforts in other disciplines, including chemistry, environmental science, mathematics, and physics.
The computer science department will use the cluster, which will run on the Linux operating system, in both existing courses and new courses.
The W. M. Keck Foundation is one of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations. Established in 1954 by the late William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company, the foundation’s giving is focused primarily in the areas of medical research, science, and engineering.
|
