Purdue supercomputer built in 4 hours

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - Though Purdue predicts their new machine will rank among the top 50 supercomputers in the world, it took volunteers only four hours to assemble on Tuesday. They constructed the computer by hooking together many smaller computers stacked in racks.

Researchers pooled their grant money to buy the equipment and create the system.

The associate vice president of research computing at Purdue, John Campbell, said the computer will be a resource available to many departments. Campbell said the computer would assist in a wide range of tasks, from helping researchers better understand how to construct buildings to deal with earthquakes to assisting them in examining the issues related to cancer.

With 10,000 processing cores, Purdue predicts it will rank among the top 50 supercomputers worldwide when the next ranking is published in November. Purdue ran a similar project last year, but this one will have one-and-half times more processing cores. It doesn't take long for a supercomputer to lose its top ranking. The one built last year, Steele, has dropped in the ranking from 105th to 196th.

The new cluster is named "Coates," for Ben Coates, who headed Purdue's School of Electrical Engineering from 1973 to 1983. The system at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing was built with 1,280 HP dual quad-core computer nodes using AMD processors, and Cisco and Chelsio network equipment. It is expected to have a peak performance of 90 teraflops.

Jerry Protheroe traveled from the Univerity of Iowa to watch the installation. He has been getting advice from Purdue for a similar project. Protheroe seemed impressed by what he had seen.

"It's a lot of fun," said Protheroe. "There's a lot of people here with a lot of energy. I think you have maybe even some of your researchers are here helping out as well."

Purdue ran a video teaser for the installation, which you can watch on YouTube or view below.