Page 16 - OIT Progress Report 2014

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High-Performance Computing (HPC)
We are pleased to report that the research capabilities at SMU improved significantly over the past year under the continued direction, guidance, and leadership of Provost Ludden, Dr. James Quick, and Dr. Thomas Hagstrom. Faculty and staff from Dedman College, Lyle School of Engineering, and OIT worked together to bring ManeFrame, SMU’s new High- Performance Computer Cluster (HPCC), online.
ManeFrame, SMU’s new super computer, is comprised of industry standard servers and storage connected by an internal high speed network and managed by a sophisticated software stack primarily based on open source code.
ManeFrame and other HPC resources connect to the campus network and Internet using both 10 Gb/s and 1 Gb/s network links to meet different requirements. This lets SMU researchers share data and access other resources via Internet2 and LEARN.
Undergraduate programs use ManeFrame to teach students how to solve problems with large scale computing capabilities. A number of departments are using ManeFrame for a wide variety of projects. Physics uses include experiments and applications for ATLAS and NOvA. Chemistry experiments and applications include the CATCO experiment, Gaussian, Q-Chem, CFOUR, and deMon2k. ManeFrame is also used for Biology experiments such as Drug Docking with AutoDock Vina, Molecular Dynamics, and NAMD applications and Mathematics computational solvers, arithmetic and acoustic modeling. Statistical comput- ing applications include SAS, R, MATLAB, Mathematica, FFTW, and MPI/Open MPI libraries.
HPC Inner Workings
With administrative servers, we can remotely manage, monitor, and configure worker node hardware, internal high speed InfiniBand network, storage subsystems, and peripheral ser- vices. The ManeFrame research community and collaborators can submit jobs from any- where using any of four login servers. Two physical and two virtual Atlas servers provide authentication and delegates for ATLAS, NOvA, and other jobs and access to ManeFrame resources from an external job factory.
Objective 8: Enhancement of the stature of the University as a result of academic programs that are organized for community outreach as well as SMU’s own constituency.
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3 creative achievement.
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Objective 7: Enhancement of undergraduate research.
Objective 4: Enhancement of strategies that increase the international representation of stu- dents and faculty.
Objective 6: Support of doctoral programs resulting in increases in research productivity and