ACADEMIA

Small Tree Communications has provided a 128-node InfiniBand (IB) cluster based on the Apple platform to Florida A & M University. The cluster, consisting of Apple G5 Xserves, will be located in the University’s new Center of Plasma Science and Technology and will be used on a project awarded by the United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command. The project, Laser Interactions with Materials for Identification Technology (LIMIT), focuses on developing tools and techniques to remotely detect hazardous materials. “The calculations we need to generate for this project involve a lot of matrix manipulations and the vector processors on the G5 are excellent for these types of calculations,” stated Dr. Lewis Johnson, assistant professor of physics at Florida A & M. “Once we had decided to move forward with the G5 Xserves for this project, Apple had recommended that we contact Small Tree Communications for information on InfiniBand and how it could help enhance our system’s performance. Additionally, we visited the Virginia Tech Terascale Computing Facility to study their Apple-based InfiniBand cluster and were amazed at the results they were able to achieve.”