OIL & GAS

The Oklahoma Daily is reporting that the University of Oklahoma (OU) Information Technology is installing a Dell supercomputer in the Merrick Computing Center nicknamed "Topdawg," said Lee Williams, vice president of Research and dean of the Graduate College. This supercomputer is unique because it is the first OU has purchased. He said there is excitement about the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research. "Anybody can throw a bucket of money and buy a really big machine," Williams said. "The difference is we train people how to use them." Henry Neeman, the director of Supercomputing for IT, said OSCER is the only university program of its kind in the world. The program teaches supercomputing to a wide range of people. A workshop called "Supercomputing in Plain English" teaches OU students about supercomputing through simple methods. "We've focused on people who don't know much about supercomputing," Neeman said. The center's top priority is getting Topdawg configured so performance benchmarks can be run to see how fast it really is, Neeman said. Its list price was more than $5 million, but OU got it for $1.9 million, Neeman said. The deal was made after Dell contacted OU and showed interest in OU's supercomputer programs. "Dell approached us because they liked what we were doing," Neeman said. Topdawg was originally going to be located in the Stephenson Research Center's supercomputer lab, near Lloyd Noble Center. But because of the high power demands of the new computer, the lab must be re-configured in order to meet the new demands, Neeman said. For the time being, Topdawg will be located in the Merrick Computing Center, but even the Merrick facility has experienced some problems. "There is some concern, and we don't want to push our luck," he said. Neeman said there is a problem with the air flow that he wants to resolve before performing a full benchmark. Neeman said that as technology advances, the computers produce the same amount of heat in a smaller space. The Stephenson Research Center supercomputer lab's cooling and power capacity will have to be at least doubled before Topdawg can be moved into the lab. Neeman said many academic fields use supercomputers for research. Some academic departments, such as meteorology, will use Topdawg to develop models. Adam Hixson, chemistry graduate research assistant, uses supercomputers in his field of molecular dynamics. Hixson said he can create protein models and see them evolve on the atomic level. He said molecular dynamics is based on theories and Topdawg will help him verify his predictions. Eddie Baron, physics and astronomy professor, said he and his associates use supercomputers to research supernovae. Supercomputers are used to understand what kind of stars produce supernovae. "It's a very nice machine," Baron said. "Having that locally will be real useful." This story was taken in part from The Oklahoma Daily. Please visit its Website for the full story by Derek Strong.