Tenchusatsu, look what your alma mater went and did (from the Dell thread):
ITHACA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 3, 1999--Cornell University today announced installation
of a 256-processor cluster at the Cornell Theory Center (CTC). The system consists of 64 Dell
PowerEdge(TM) servers, each with four Intel Pentium(R) III Xeon(TM) 500 Mhz processors
and running the Microsoft Windows(R) NT(TM) operating system. Each system has 2 MB of
Level 2 cache per processor, 4 GB RAM and 54 GB disc. The primary cluster interconnect is
provided by Giganet, Inc. Dubbed AC3 Velocity, the cluster will serve as a production
high-performance computing resource for CTC's research community and the Advanced Cluster
Computing Consortium (AC3).
AC3 is a Cornell research and IT service consortium established for corporate, higher-education, and
government agencies interested in the effective planning, implementation, and performance of
commodity-based software, systems, and tools.
Dell, Intel, Microsoft Corp., and Giganet, who are infrastructure members of AC3, view the
consortium as an important step in accelerating the standardization of cluster computing.
"Dell is committed to building standards-based solutions that scale throughout the enterprise," said
Michael Lambert, senior vice president of Dell's enterprise systems group. "We applaud the
teamwork that led to creation of AC3 Velocity and look forward to working with AC3 members to
further validate and demonstrate the computing power, availability, and scalability of Dell
PowerEdge(TM) servers and PowerVault(TM) storage solutions in enterprise environments."
"The emergence of the Internet is changing the face of contemporary business and scientific
computing, increasing the demand for server scalability and availability, while keeping costs under
control," said Justin R. Rattner, Intel Fellow and director of Intel's Server Architecture Lab. "Clusters
of servers, based on Intel Pentium(R) III Xeon(TM) processors and multiple industry-standards, like
Virtual Interface Architecture, have emerged as one of the premier strategies to provide both high
availability and scalability in the computationally-intensive Internet environment."
Todd Needham, manager of research programs at Microsoft, added, "We're focused on working with
the AC3 to build and validate a model for supercomputing constructed from industry standard servers,
high-performance networking, and Windows NT that industry and large enterprises can apply to a
wide range of problems." CTC will rapidly be moving toward Windows 2000 cluster services on
AC3 Velocity this year. Needham commented, "At 256 processors, Velocity will clearly be a
testament to the scalability of Windows 2000."
"Today's environments require enterprises to be able to easily scale computing needs," said Gareth
Taube, Giganet's vice president, marketing. "With the combination of our cLAN(TM) products,
powered by Dell's PowerEdge servers, we can provide a flexible, cost-effective way to support
mission-critical scientific, engineering, and Internet applications." Taube added that AC3 Velocity
will be the largest Giganet production configuration in the world.
"We are confident that AC3 Velocity will deliver scalable, high-performance computing with
enterprise-wide applicability," said David Lifka, systems director at CTC. Thomas F. Coleman, CTC
director, noted that researchers at Cornell, one of the leading institutions in computational science and
engineering in the world, agree. "We're finding that Windows NT-based cluster computing is an
attractive environment for computer scientists and computational scientists, and is bringing new
researchers from business and the social sciences into the CTC community," he said.
The AC3 provides access to both pre-release hardware and software, as well high-performance
production machines. AC3 Velocity will be used for technical applications such as biomedical and
genomics research, seismic processing, materials modeling, large-scale database and
datawarehousing applications, and computer science research in areas such as parallel I/O and
systems reliability.
Researchers at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management applauded CTC's move to
Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 2000-based cluster computing. Andrew Ainslie, for
example, conducts marketing research using very large datasets and computationally intensive
techniques. "The Windows NT-based supercomputing environment presents researchers with a
tremendous opportunity," he said. "We are able to develop code on inexpensive machines in our
offices, and then scale the application massively when it is ready to run." According to Ainslie, this
provides an excellent, highly flexible framework for his research, enabling him to tackle projects "at
least one order of magnitude larger than I would have been able to otherwise."
Ken Birman, Cornell computer scientist, is using the cluster to develop a new generation of software
for fault-tolerant, load-balanced "data center" applications, such as servers managing massive
databases. He commented that "Experiments using the new cluster will take our research from a
conceptual stage to practical solutions that can be used in realistic settings. Cluster computing is
poised to revolutionize many kinds of business applications, and with the AC3 Velocity, Cornell's
contributions can have an immediate impact on potential users." Birman noted that a recent
Presidential blue-ribbon committee, PITAC, cited scalable, fault-tolerant cluster computing as a
critical requirement for this country over the next decade.
Cornell physicist James Sethna works on a challenging project focused on developing modeling and
simulation capabilities to represent defect structure and evolution in solids over many length and time
scales. According to Sethna, "The Theory Center is developing what may well become the working
environment for affordable supercomputing of the future, making it easy to launch and control
large-scale projects." Sethna noted that CTC's technical move to large-scale cluster computing
meshes well with his group's Digital Material working environment, which will give researchers and
engineers easy and flexible access to state-of-the-art mathematical and physical simulations and
models."
Robert Constable, Cornell's new dean for computing and information sciences (CIS) believes that
AC3 and AC3 Velocity will be valuable assets in Cornell's strategic vision for CIS in research and
education. "Windows 2000 and Intel architecture-based cluster computing are the direction of the
future," he said. "The Theory Center is an integral part of CIS and we're delighted that they are taking
a leadership position in this arena."
In preparation for the arrival of the 256-processor cluster, CTC's Cluster Computing Solutions Group
has been porting applications to a smaller cluster that was received as part of a Technology for
Education 2000 grant that Intel made to Cornell in 1997. The grant enabled Cornell to develop
expertise in moving applications from UNIX(TM) systems to Microsoft Windows NT, based on the
Intel Xeon processor architecture, and provided excellent performance and scaling data. The group
will provide suggestions for enhancing clustering technologies to AC3 Infrastructure Members based
on the experiences of users with large-scale, computationally challenging problems.
AC3 Velocity will run MPI/Pro(TM) from MPI Software Technology, Inc. and implementations of
OpenMP from Kuck and Associates and the Portand Group, with compilers for Fortran90, C and C++.
MPI/Pro includes ClusterCoNTroller(TM), a resource management and scheduling tool developed by
Lifka at CTC and commercialized by MPI Software Technology. Other AC3 infrastructure members
include Etnus, Inc., Fluent, Inc., ILOG, Inc., MPI Software Technology, Inc., the Numerical
Algorithms Group, The Portland Group, Inc., Reliable Network Solutions Inc., and SAS Institute, Inc. |
