ACADEMIA

HPC Cluster is Sun's Largest Solaris 10 HPC Installation To-Date: At Supercomputing 2006, Sun Microsystems today announced that the Mississippi State University (MSU) High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC2) is deploying a high performance computing (HPC) cluster based on the newest Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) servers powered by the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), the most advanced operating system on the planet -- representing Sun's largest Solaris 10 HPC win to-date. The implementation was built, delivered and installed through the Sun Customer Ready Systems (CRS) program, and includes more than 500 Sun Fire X2200 M2 servers powered by Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors. The new HPC cluster will provide computing resources for the HPC2's five member organizations: Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS), Center for Computational Sciences (CCS), Center for DoD Programming Environment and Training (PET), Computational Simulation and Design Center (SimCenter) and GeoResources Institute (GRI). The HPC2, an evolution of the MSU NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Computational Field Simulation at Mississippi State University, is a world-renowned center in the computational field simulation of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, and structural mechanics for applications to aircraft, spacecraft, ships, automobiles, environmental, ocean and biological flow problems. MSU will leverage unique performance enhancing features of the Solaris 10 OS, such as Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) and Sun Studio compilers to optimize applications for their new cluster. "We were extremely impressed by Sun's total systems approach and their ability to help us get the cluster built and fully deployed, which led us to select Sun's solutions for the HPC2. The new HPC cluster gives us more compute power than all of our older clusters combined, making our research more timely and applicable," said Trey Breckenridge, High Performance Computing Resources and Operations Administrator. "In addition, the Sun Customer Ready Systems program made the installation burden-free for my staff, and we had the entire system up and running in about 10 hours after the trucks arrived." "Sun has a successful history of working with Mississippi State University in High Performance Computing, dating to MSU's National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center award in 1990," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "Sun's total systems approach of combining Sun hardware with the Solaris 10 OS results in better HPC performance for our customers, reducing their risk and speeding deployment." The Sun CRS program enables businesses to order ready-to-deploy solutions that are built to their specifications, pre-integrated and tested in Sun's factories. The program is designed to deliver systems that simplify and speed deployment of solutions, helping reduce total cost of ownership and improve the quality of customers' infrastructure. For more information on Sun's HPC solutions, please visit: its Web site For more information on the Sun Customer Ready Systems (CRS) program, please visit: its Web site For more information on Mississippi State University HPC2's research, visit: its Web site.