AEROSPACE

The Cornell Theory Center (CTC) is demonstrating its latest research and development, software, and technologies at SC04, held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, from November 8-11. This marks the conference’s 16th year and CTC’s 15th year of participation. At this year’s conference, CTC is showcasing the advantages and opportunities of Windows-based high-performance computing and Intel processors. Eight demonstrations, covering topics ranging from data-intensive computing to bioinformatics, agriculture to videoconferencing, and job scheduling to fracture mechanics, will be presented during the conference. Specifically, the demonstrations, which will take place in CTC’s research exhibit in booth number 2235 as well as in the Microsoft and Unisys exhibits, include the following: • Data-Intensive Computing Data-Intensive Computing Enables Scientists to Pinpoint Pulsars Development of High Resolution Climate Data for the Northeast A Collaborative Environment for Multi-Physics Simulations based on Web Services • Windows-Based Bioinformatics CBSU Bioinformatics Applications on Windows-Based Platforms • CTC R&D Velocity Scheduler Scalable and Secure startup mechanism for MPICH 1.2.5 • Outreach Online Multi-User Systems Share Cornell’s Research in Cyberspace ConferenceXP • Three-Dimensional Viewing with Stereo Wall Adds New Dimensions CTC will also sponsor a bioinformatics challenge to see who can calculate the most protein structure alignments using a cycle-scavenging application provided at http://www.tc.cornell.edu/sc2004/biocontest. Identified by email address, the user who performs the most work will earn a Toshiba tablet PC. “The scope of the whole problem requires significant computational resources,” said CTC Chief Technical Officer Dave Lifka. “Wrapping the original code in C# to use Web services, we have taken advantage of the problem’s highly parallel data decomposition to gain access to available desktop resources.” In addition, CTC is highlighting work that has been visualized in our CAVE, the world’s first Windows/Intel multi-wall, stereo, immersive virtual reality environment for viewing scientific, engineering, architectural, and art applications that help clients explore their data visually using Microsoft Windows. “At CTC, we continue to introduce innovative and strategic options for handling computationally- and data-intensive applications,” said CTC Executive Director Linda Callahan. “CTC’s resources have been instrumental in a variety of recent scientific breakthroughs. With Windows-based HPC, researchers have predicted rocket engine component failures using Web services and a geographically-distributed grid, identified genes associated with retinal degenerative disease in dogs, and pinpointed exotic pulsars in the Milky Way galaxy.” CTC has been a pioneer in the high-performance computing arena since 1984, focusing from the start on parallel computation, and is a showcase Windows-based solutions center.