CRI: IAD Exploiting Multicore Processor Technology for Interactive Supercomputing

The project team will build at the University of Minnesota's Laboratory for Computational Science & Engineering (LCSE) a system especially targeted at enabling exploratory science through interactive supercomputing. Both Cell-based and Intel-based multicore CPU technology will be applied in an Infiniband cluster to achieve sustained performance levels with the team?s application codes approaching 2 Tflop/s. The raw processing power of the multicore CPUs will be combined with fast attached disk systems, the latest GPU technology, and the LCSE's PowerWall display to enable interactive control of on-going fluid dynamics simulations with immediate feedback through user-controlled flow visualizations on the PowerWall. The system will also be utilized for applications in genomics. This project will support research in astrophysical and geophysical fluid dynamics, genomics, multicore implementation of numerical algorithms for scientific computation, high performance scientific visualization for very large datasets, Grid computing, and job/resource scheduling. It will also support teaching and student training. The project involves an on-going collaboration of the LCSE team with the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. The techniques and software developed using the new interactive supercomputing system should have broad applicability in the high performance computing community. This software will be deployable on super-computing systems at national centers, where the enabled interactive capability can be enjoyed at much higher grid resolutions in a more production-oriented context.