Northwest Indiana Computational Grid - Computational Resources on NWICG

Computational Resources on NWICG

All NWICG resources are available to users on a tiered priority basis. While higher tiers may take priority over lower tiers, users from all tiers are welcome and will get their jobs scheduled whenever an opportunity arises. The user tiers are:

NWICG-sposored researchers
NWICG campus users (users at any NWICG member campus)
Open Science Grid (OSG) users

Occasionally, NWICG may authorize other users at higher priorities to test, troubleshoot, or for other infrastructure development needs.

If you would like to start using NWICG, see our User Guides for more information on how to get started.

Processing

SGI Altix 4700 Supercomputer

Purdue-West Lafayette recently acquired an SGI Altix 4700 with 128 Intel® Itanium® processors and 512GB memory. See http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2006/october/purdue.html for more information.

SGI Altix 450 FPGA

Purdue-West Lafayette also recently acquired an 8-core FPGA-based SGI Altix 450 with 2 SGI RASC RC100 Blade systems, yielding 4 Xilinx Virtrex FPGA's. Additionally, the Altix 450 will include the RASC software from SGI that provides OS level support for the FPGA blades. See http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2006/october/purdue.html for more information.

Sun Fire X2100 System

The University of Notre Dame acquired a 144-core Sun Fire X2100 system with 64-bit AMD Opteron processors (http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100).

Calumet Condor Pool

The Purdue-Calumet Condor pool consists of over 200 Pentium 4 execution nodes scattered across campus in various labs and a Dell PowerEdge 2850 dual Xeon Condor master server. The PUC Condor cluster is also part of several other Condor clusters across northwest Indiana, including clusters in Purdue West Lafayette and Notre Dame. Users of Condor can submit jobs and have those jobs run at any of the clusters that are part of the Condor pool. Condor is best suited for researchers who need to run hundreds of small jobs. The particular job application can be any executable that is currently on the execution nodes or a relatively small executable sent by the user as part of their job submission. Future plans for the PUC Condor cluster include: adding additional execution nodes, providing a Condor status web page for monitoring the Condor pool, creating readily available usage documentation for end users, and locating NWICG faculty who can effectively utilize the Condor pool.

Storage

SGI InfiniteStorage 4000

In conjuction with the Altix above, Purdue-West Lafayette recently brought online a 30TB SGI InfiniteStorage 4000 storage system which will be used for scratch storage and connected to the university's larger storage systems and archive.

NetApp FAS3050 Storage Array

The University of Notre Dame also added a NetApp FAS3050 Storage Array with 36TB of storage and the NetApp ONTAP® GX operating system. See http://www.netapp.com/products/software/ontap-gx.html for more information.

High-performance Grid Computing Support for Detection, Identification, and Tracking in Sensor-Cyber
Detection, identification, and tracking (DIT) problems that arise in applications such as perimeter surveillance for suspected group activities or detection/assessment of radiation and chemical dispersions, require capabilities beyond those of … [more]
Large-scale Classical Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Novel Nano-ceramic Matrix Composites
One of the key focus areas in the nanomaterials technology is the development of nanocrystalline materials with desired improvements in the mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. Examples of such nanomaterials are nanocrystalline Al, Cu, … [more]
PURE-NX
We propose developing PURE-NX: a real-time remote rendering and interactive visualization platform for Doppler weather radar data. PURE-NX allows users to interactively access, analyze, and visualize remote 3-D data. Moreover, such a system is … [more]
A Distributed Active Storage Testbed for Scientific Applications on NWICG
Users with large computing needs have easy access to an enormous array of CPUs via systems such as the TeraGrid, the Open Science Grid, and (soon) NWICG. However, users of these systems are almost universally constrained by the performance of … [more]
Parallel 3D Cellular Potts Model Package and its Applications
Morphogenesis is one of three fundamental mechanisms of developmental biology along with cell growth and differentiation. Understanding morphogenesis requires understanding the processes which control the spatial distribution of cells during … [more]
Docking, Virtual Screening and MD in Drug Discovery
The use of computational methods had a major impact on modern drug design and is now firmly established as a necessary element of any drug development. A recent study by Boston Consulting estimated that the use of in silico methods saves … [more]
Enabling Scientific Collaboration using Application-Level Multicast
Scientific collaboration applications such as large-scale reliable transfer of data to multiple sites, web-service notification, and video conferencing (e.g. Access Grid) require the ability to efficiently disseminate high-bandwidth content to a … [more]
September 11 WTC Attack Simulations Using LS-Dyna
The graphics group used professional animation and visualization tools to bring the simulation results of the 9/11 attack on the North Tower of the World Trade Center to life. Still images, papers, and animations are available here: … [more]
Enhancing Electric System Reliability and Communications with the NWICG
This proposal seeks to conduct research and developmental activities to assist in enhancing reliability and communications for the interconnected electric transmission network. As evidenced by the huge financial and personal losses resulting from … [more]
On-Line Biometric Data Repository
The biometrics research group at Notre Dame conducts (with support from DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, NSF, ITIC, DOJ, and UNISYS) cutting-edge research and performance evaluation of multibiometric systems. Notre Dame currently hosts the largest open research … [more]
Need for Grid Computing in High Energy Physics
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to be completed in 2007, will smash particles, protons to protons with nearly the speed of light to create conditions that occurred a few seconds after the Big Bang. These collisions will happen at an unprecedented … [more]
Easy Sharing of NWICG Resources through iShare
iShare is an Internet sharing infrastructure – a follow-on effort to Purdue’s successful PUNCH project. iShare enables Internet-connected resources such as computer systems, storage systems, applications, and data to be shared easily. That is, … [more]
Computational Models of Star Cluster Evolution
Star clusters in the Galaxy come in several varieties, ranging primarily in their size (number of stars) and distribution within the Galactic gravitational potential. A proper understanding of the observational results of star clusters requires … [more]