OU Supercomputer Symposium

If you’re interested in hearing about the state of the art in supercomputing, OU is having their annual Supercomputer Symposium.  It’s free to attend and will have plenty of interesting things to check out.

From Henry Neeman at OSCER:

FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE

OKLAHOMA SUPERCOMPUTING SYMPOSIUM 2012
Wed Oct 3 8:00am-5:00pm (registration and breakfast 7:30am)
FREE Reception/poster session Tue Oct 2 5:30-7:00pm
University of Oklahoma Norman campus

http://symposium2012.oscer.ou.edu/

Are you interested in the FREE Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2012
on Wed Oct 3 on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus?

http://symposium2012.oscer.ou.edu/

Our keynote speaker will be:

Thom Dunning, Director, National Center for Supercomputing Applications

The 2011 Symposium had 239 attendees, from 34 academic institutions
in 7 states, 29 private companies, 10 government agencies and
5 non-governmental organizations.

Over the past decade, we’ve had participation from over 2000 people
at 98 academic institutions from 27 US states and territories,
107 private companies, 33 government agencies (federal, state,
municipal, foreign) and 16 non-governmental organizations.

SUMMARY:

FREE Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2012 Wed Oct 3
@ University of Oklahoma, Norman campus, 8:00am-5:00pm.

FREE reception/poster session Tue Oct 2 5:00-7:00pm.

FREE registration is open!

http://symposium2012.oscer.ou.edu/

Work on the OU supercomputer!

Henry Neeman passed along this great opportunity for OU students only:

The OU Norman campus opportunity below is available to OU students only.

Henry

==================================================================

Student Employee – Supercomputing Internship (FALL)

http://jobs.ou.edu/

Requisition Number: 15162
Position #: 00022344

Job Search Category: Student or Work Study
Job Type: Part-Time
Number Needed: 1
Listing Category: Technical and Paraprofessional

Department: Information Technology (IT)
Campus: Norman

Application Deadline: Open Until Filled

Work Schedule: Normal working hours are M-F 8-5. Will depend on
class schedule.
Hours per week: 15-20

Are you interested in an Opportunity to gain real-world IT
experience?

Information Technology is offering a one-year paid Internship
that will emphasize the prevalence of Supercomputing Technology.

As an OU IT Intern, you will have an opportunity to work as a
member of a team of IT Professionals specializing in
Supercomputing technology.

You will be assigned a mentor and will learn the following
development concepts as well as apply them in real-life IT
projects:

* Account management
* Batch system/queue management
* Software management
* File system management
* Network management and troubleshooting
* User application support
* Hardware maintenance
* Backups/Restores

Note: This internship may also be eligible for college credit.

Required Education and Experience: High School diploma or GED as
well as some formal college training.

***Must have completed intro programming classes or equivalent
experience.

Must be currently enrolled in the FALL 2012 term as a student at
the University of Oklahoma. Hiring contingent upon verification of
current student status.

Required Skills and Proficiencies:

The ideal candidate demonstrates a strong work ethic, is
self-directed and is productive working independently as well as
collaboratively; Must be an analytical thinker with the ability to
identify, define, interpret, and resolve both technical and human
issues.

Must have completed intro programming classes or equivalent
experience.

* Computer Skills
* Excellent Communication Skills

Department Preferences:

* Undergraduate study in MIS, Computer Science, Engineering or
other computer related field.
* Experience in Unix system administration.
* Experience with C programming language.
* Experience with Perl programming language.

You’ll be working with OSCER not Oscar!

It’s Alive!

As promised, Boomer is up and running!

A picture of Boomer (but where’s the blinking lights?)

Henry Neeman sent us the announcement:

OU Deploys Fastest Academic Supercomputer in Oklahoma History

May 24, 2012

NORMAN — “Boomer,” the fastest academic supercomputer in state history, was deployed today at the University of Oklahoma.

“The deployment of the state’s fastest supercomputer in state history will further enhance OU’s academic excellence,” said OU President David L. Boren.

The supercomputer clocks in at a peak speed of roughly 109
trillion calculations per second and supports OU’s research
initiatives.

“This new supercomputer represents an incredible opportunity for OU,” said Loretta Early, OU’s Chief Information Officer and University Vice President for Information Technology. “Boomer will substantially expand OU’s ability to engage in cutting-edge,
computing-intensive research — to do more, and to do it faster and better, at a lower cost.”

Researchers will employ Boomer to compute large amounts of data for a broad variety of research with emphasis on weather forecasting, molecular dynamics and high-energy physics, which explores the fundamental nature of matter and energy. Boomer also will support research in astronomy, coastal flooding, biomedical
engineering, data encoding for disk drives, petroleum engineering, nanotechnology, groundwater contamination, biofuels, and wireless networks, among many other areas.

Henry Neeman, Director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research, a division of OU Information Technology, said that OU IT focuses on the needs of researchers at a level that is almost unprecedented nationally even among top research universities.

“For the past decade, OU has been a national leader in supporting the computational research and education needs of local students, faculty and staff,” Neeman said. “We’re extremely proud to expand a great tradition with this fourth generation OU IT supercomputer,
which will enhance research capabilities by connecting scientific collaborators throughout the state and nation.”

Boomer is three times as fast as the previous fastest academic supercomputer in the state, OU’s “Sooner,” which served hundreds of undergraduates, graduate students, staff and faculty from 2008 to early 2012. It’s also 100 times as fast as OU IT’s first supercomputer, built in 2002.

OneNet, Oklahoma’s statewide research, education and government network, will deliver Boomer’s capabilities from OU IT’s high-speed campus network to OU research teams, and 24 other Oklahoma institutions and more than 150 out-of-state and international collaborators will also be connected through OneNet.

“We’re very proud of our role in facilitating research, one of
OU’s key missions and a crucial engine for statewide economic development,” Early said. “With this new resource, we improve our potential to attract a growing number of research projects and increase external funding, and therefore attract and retain the best and brightest researchers, both faculty and students. Boomer
is both a logical next step and a major breakthrough for
researchers on campus.”

In addition, Boomer will connect to the Oklahoma PetaStore, which has the capacity to store multiple Petabytes (millions of Gigabytes) of research data, allowing OU researchers to create and maintain very large research data collections. Keith Brewster, acting Director of the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms, is looking forward to improving forecasting models with Boomer’s capabilities. “Severe weather, including tornadoes and hurricanes, kills hundreds of people and destroys billions of dollars of property every year. OU’s new supercomputer will help us to improve forecasts of these events, allowing us to resolve features half the size we could resolve previously.” Making large-scale, accessible and professionally managed advanced computing capability available to OU’s researchers also ensures that investigators will meet the requirements of federal research funding programs. Through deployment of Boomer, the University’s goal is to strengthen OU’s grant applications, leading to improved outcomes for researchers, students and Oklahoma’s economy.

To paraphrase Dr. Boren when approving the construction of Boomer: “But the deciding factor was when we learned that Texas was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.”

Would you like to play a game?

The OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) has started assembling a brand new high speed supercomputer.  For those of you who were here in 2008, we toured OSCER and walked inside OU’s current supercomputer (called Sooner).

Sooner is capable of a 34,450.24 GFLOPs theoretical peak and 28,030 GFLOPs sustained performance in its calculations (GFLOPS = gigaflops).  When it was built it appeared on the world ranking of supercomputers at #90 worldwide, #47 in the US, #14 among US academic supercomputers, #10 among US academic excluding national centers, and #2 in the Big 12.

You can look at the current list of top ranked supercomputers here.

Just like smartphones and everything else, supercomputers are eventually replaced with faster models.  Sadly, Sooner doesn’t even make the top 500 supercomputers anymore!

The good news is that OU has started constructing Sooner’s faster sibling, Boomer.  Here’s some of the details about Boomer:

* Theoretical Peak Speed: 104.4 TFLOPs (3x Sooner)
* Total RAM: 13.7 TB (1.6x Sooner)

That would put Boomer at around 100 on the list of supercomputers.  We’ll have to take a tour this fall once it’s up and running!

OU Conference on Supercomputing

Friend of the Math Club, Henry Neeman ( the Directorof the OU Supercomputer Center), let us know of a cool on-campus event you might want to check out:
FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE

Are you interested in the FREE Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2011
on Wed Oct 12 on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus?

http://symposium2011.oscer.ou.edu/

If you’ve already registered, please feel free to pass this note
along to others who might be interested.

Our keynote speaker will be Dr. Barry I. Schneider of the National
Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure.

The 2010 Symposium had 267 attendees, from 34 academic institutions
in 7 states, 29 private companies, 10 government agencies and
5 non-governmental organizations.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested
– students, faculty, staff, professionals, colleagues etc. Many
thanks.

If you’ve received this note in error, please ignore it.

———-

SUMMARY:

FREE Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2011 Wed Oct 12 @ University
of Oklahoma, Norman campus, 8:00am-5:30pm.

FREE reception/poster session Tue Oct 11 5:30-7:00pm.

FREE tutorial on Parallel Programming & Cluster Computing
Tue Oct 11 9:00am-4:30pm.

FREE registration is open!

http://symposium2011.oscer.ou.edu/

Our keynote speaker will be Barry I. Schneider of the National
Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure.

In 2010, we had 267 attendees, from 34 academic institutions in
7 states, 29 private companies, 10 government agencies and
5 non-governmental organizations.

If you’ve already registered, please feel free to pass this note
along to others who might be interested.

You can find links to previous Symposia on the above website.

DETAILS:

The Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2011 will be held Wed Oct 12
all day on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus, and a reception
and poster session Tuesday evening, 5:30-7:00pm.

FREE registration is open!

http://symposium2011.oscer.ou.edu/

Plenary speakers will include:

* Barry I. Schneider, Office of Cyberinfrastructure, National Science
Foundation

* Douglas Cline, Lockheed Martin Aerospace Co

* Leesa Brieger, Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI)

More speakers will be announced soon.

We’d be delighted to have you participate. It’s a great way to
learn what’s happening on the Advanced Computing side of your
research and teaching areas.

The Symposium is FREE and comes with meals and snacks, including
the FREE reception and poster session the evening of Tue Oct 11.

And, if you know of students — graduate, undergraduate, community
college, vo-tech, high school — who are interested in these areas,
this is a great opportunity to introduce them to conferences,
especially because it’s FREE.

Also, if you know of colleagues who might be interested, please feel
free to forward this note to them.

We’ll also have a vendor exposition, where you’ll have an opportunity
to learn about existing and emerging supercomputing technologies.

If you’re interested, see:

http://symposium2011.oscer.ou.edu/

Tour the OU Supercomputer Center!

If you’re not going to UNT for Dr. Friedberg’s talk, then you might be interested in taking a tour of the OU supercomputer center.  The Math Club did this tour a couple of years ago and it was very interesting.  You even get to walk through the center of the supercomputer!

This Friday Dr. Neeman will be leading a tour of the supercomputer center and answering all your supercomputing questions.

Here’s the info:

WHAT: Supercomputing Tour
WHERE: Merrick Computing Center (directions below)
WHEN: Fri Sep 16 4:00pm
WHO: You, if you’ve never been on a supercomputing tour before
WHY: People who take the tour understand supercomputing much better

Merrick is located at 1610 Newton Drive on North Base, just
north of Robinson between Berry and Flood.

Driving directions from campus:

1. Take Boyd to Berry.

2. Turn right (northbound) onto Berry.

3. Cross the traffic light at Robinson and go a few blocks more to the T-intersection at Westheimer.

4. Turn right (eastbound) onto Westheimer and go a few blocks to the T intersection at Newton.

Merrick will be on your left, a one story orange brick building.

Parking is available in front and back. If you park in back, please come around to the front (south) entrance, facing Robinson.

CART Bus from campus:

The N21 Green Alameda East route departs the South Oval every hour on the hour  and arrives at the corner
of Berry and Westheimer approximately 26 minutes after the hour.

http://cart.ou.edu/green.html

Walk east (away from I-35 and toward Flood) for about two blocks. Merrick will be on your left (north).

If you’d like to take the tour, you can just show up at the Merrick building.  Or, if you want to be sure there is still space on the tour, you can email Dr. Neeman and check.

If lots of people want to go, we could arrange with Dr. Neeman to give the Math Club a tour of our own.

We’re Number 91!

Henry Neeman, the Director of the Supercomputer Center, sent out the following email:

OSCER users,

I’m delighted to report that OU’s new cluster supercomputer,
Sooner, is ranked:

* #91 worldwide among all supercomputers;

* #14 among all supercomputers at US academic institutions;

* #10 among supercomputers at US academic institutions other than
national supercomputing centers — the important number (8-).

http://top500.org/list/2008/11/100

Congratulations to all of us!

People who’ve earned our gratitude include (but aren’t limited to):

* OSCER’s amazing operations team — Brandon, Dave, Brett and Josh
– who went so far above and beyond;

* the OU IT cabling team;

* the OU IT facilities team, especially Fred and Stan;

* the OU external relations team, especially Matt S and David G;

* OU Purchasing;

* our vendors, especially the teams at Dell, QLogic, Panasas,
Platform, Force10 and Platform;

* the Intel benchmarking crew, especially Andrey and Sergei, for
staying up with us late into the night many nights in a row to
help with this;

* everyone within OU IT who worked so hard to make this happen;

* OU’s Board of Regents;

* Loretta, for facilitating at every step.

And, last but definitely not least, heartfelt thanks to our boss,
Dennis, for seeing the possibilities and making them come true.

I should add that, looking through the Top 500 list, it seems
that only 24 US universities (other than big national centers)
are even on the list:

U New Mexico, SUNY Stony Brook, RPI, Clemson, U Southern Cal,
LONI/LSU, Harvard, Arizona State, U North Carolina, OU, Purdue,
U Alaska, Columbia, Caltech, Indiana, U Nebraska/PKI,
U Minnesota, Ohio Supercomputer Center, Virginia Tech,
Colorado School of Mines, Texas Tech, Stanford, U Arizona,
U Kentucky

And here are the universities associated with the big national
center:

U Texas Austin, U Tennessee, U Illinois, CMU/U Pitt, UCSD

A nice data point: on the new (Nov 2008) Top 500 list, we’re
ranked better than two of the major national centers: Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center and San Diego Supercomputer Center.

Of course, PSC will beat us shortly when they debut their new
Track2C machine (~$30M hardware); I’m not sure what SDSC has up
their sleeve.

Oh, and we’re also #2 in the Big 12, after U Texas (national
center).