LSU-Shreveport Supercomputer Crunches Big Numbers
Published Mar 07, 2008
The future’s so bright in computer science at Louisiana State University-Shreveport that the professors and the students are wearing shades – literally.
One of the many capabilities of a newly assembled supercomputing cluster is the ability to display information and graphics in 3-D. The funky green and red glasses aren’t just for watching old B movies, they’ll help assistant professors Marjan Trutschl and Urska Cvek, their colleagues and their students explore the secrets of the human genome and any number of other large sets of data.
“It’s so much easier to see patterns,” using the stereoscopic visualization, Cvek says.
Trutschl and Cvek, who are partners in marriage as well as science, have been the driving force behind building the school’s supercomputer using Dell computers and open source software provided through grant funding from the National Science Foundation.
The 80 computers, which each have two processors, are roughly equivalent to 160 desktop PCs.
“We’re close to a trillion floating point operations a second,” says Trutschl, an LSUS alumnus who returned to teach after getting his doctorate. “It would take one day to calculate what it would take (a single computer) 160 days.”
The supercomputer cluster will have the brainpower to do large-scale genome analysis, searching for patterns in genes, crunch large data sets or render graphics that would just simply take too long with a regular computer setup.
The computer system cost $250,000 and LSUS had to spend about $100,000 to upgrade the school’s infrastructure to provide power, cooling and connections for the system. By contrast, a Cray supercomputer typically costs millions.
The supercomputer cluster has the added benefits of being easier to service – if one computer goes out, it’s easy to replace – and easier to expand.
Trutschl and Cvek’s primary research interest lies in biomedical-related research and super-high-speed connections will let them collaborate with researchers across town at LSUS Medical Center and around the state.
But the computer science professors won’t be hogging all of the supercomputer’s time.
“Our students have full access to the machine,” and others on campus will be able to use the cluster for their own teaching and research projects, Trutschl says.
Story by Michaela Gipson Morris
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