APPLICATIONS

Early “tire kicking” by Purdue researchers is winning the University’s new “green” ‎supercomputer some fans, although the results have been mixed for others and they all ‎caution that more refining and testing needs to be done.‎ “It allows us to efficiently perform simulations much larger than we could do with other ‎machines,” materials engineering Professor Alejandro Strachan said of the computer ‎from Massachusetts-based SiCortex. “I think it’s a great machine to do consistently large ‎systems.” ‎‎ Purdue’s latest supercomputer won’t make any lists of the fastest supercomputers in the ‎world, the country, Midwest, or state. It’s not even the fastest on campus. ‎‎ But the machine from SiCortex has advantages that could make it a boon for some ‎researchers because it can tackle big problems by breaking them into pieces and ‎processing those simultaneously with a high rate of efficiency. ‎‎ Moreover, the new supercomputer—which has more than 3,000 processors—isn’t green only if it is running climate simulations, one potential ‎use, at Purdue’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing. SiCortex designed it to consume ‎less power than conventional supercomputers. ‎‎ Purdue is the first university to test SiCortex’s top-of-the-line model. The high ‎performance, research-focused computing arm of Information Technology at Purdue ‎‎(ITaP), the Rosen Center is leasing the experimental machine for more than a year’s ‎testing with an option to buy if it proves useful to Purdue researchers.‎ ‎ More about this story on the ITaP new site.