The Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation is an interdisciplinary research program spanning all colleges of the University of Minnesota. The Supercomputing Institute provides supercomputing resources and user support to faculty and students and is a linchpin program in the University's broad-based digital technology effort. The mission of the Supercomputing Institute is supercomputing research. This includes all aspects of high-performance computing and scientific modeling and simulation as well as graphics, visualization, and high-performance network communications. Supercomputing research is defined broadly to include a variety of research activities from many disciplines. This research involves the use of high-performance computing environments to address problems in science and engineering that could not otherwise be attempted. Such efforts often result in domain-specific algorithms and codes that exploit the available computing environments as well as visualization techniques to enhance insight, make displays more informative, and add multimedia value to communications and work environments. In many cases, these research activities may involve research aimed at the design or evaluation of high-performance computing hardware, operating systems, networking, and general-purpose algorithms and software.
The Supercomputing Institute's resources are available to researchers at the University of Minnesota and other post-secondary educational institutions in the State of Minnesota. In addition, the Supercomputing Institute organizes and hosts symposia, workshops, and seminars and coordinates other educational and collaborative activities to promote supercomputing research, increase university-industry collaboration, and promote technology transfer.
In 1981, the University of Minnesota was the first American University to acquire a supercomputer (a Cray-1B). The Supercomputing Institute was created in 1984 to provide leading edge high-performance computing resources to the University of Minnesota's research community. From its inception through mid-1998, the supercomputing resources offered to the University of Minnesota research community included a Cray-2, an ETA 10, a Cray X-MP, an IBM 3090, a Cray M90, a Cray T3D, a twelve-processor Cray C90, and a Cray T3E-900.
The Supercomputing Institute has continued the strong tradition of providing University of Minnesota researchers with leading edge high-performance computing technologies and diversified programs that complement these technologies. In May of 1998, the Institute began offering its researchers access to a 256-processor IBM SP Silvernode supercomputer with 192 GB of memory. This IBM SP supercomputer was a 64-node machine with four 332 MHz 604e processors and 3 GB of memory on each node.
In May 1999, the Institute upgraded the IBM SP by acquiring 80 WinterHawk nodes. Each of the WinterHawk nodes contained two 200 MHz Power3 processors sharing 1 GB of memory for a total of 160 WinterHawk processors. In November 1999, 17 NightHawk nodes were added to the WinterHawk nodes.
In April 2000, the WinterHawk nodes were upgraded to WinterHawk+ technology. The Institute's IBM SP supercomputer currently comprises 390 processors with 663 GB of memory. It consists of 79 four-processor and 3 two-processor WinterHawk+ nodes with 391 GB of memory and 17 four-processor NightHawk nodes with 272 GB of memory. The NightHawk nodes utilize the 222 MHz Power3 processors and WinterHawk+ nodes utilize the 375 MHz Power3+ processor. In addition, the Institute has a 16-processor Silvernode IBM SP with 12 GB of memory. The Silvernode SP utilizes the 332 MHz PowerPC 604e processor. The IBM supercomputer resources are available in coordination with the IBM Shared University Research (SUR) partnership.
The Supercomputing Institute also offers access to a 64-processor SGI Origin 2000 R12000 supercomputer with a clock speed of 300 MHz and a total of 102 GB of memory. The Institute also currently offers its researchers access to a 32-processor SGI Origin 2000 R10000 supercomputer with 8 GB of memory.
The total amount of disk available to users of the IBM SP systems is 3.3 Terabytes. The total amount of disk available to users of the SGI Origin 2000 systems is currently 640 GB.
The supercomputing resources are located at the Supercomputing Institute's facilities in the Minnesota Technology Corridor at the edge of the West Bank of the Minneapolis Campus of the University.
These IBM and SGI supercomputers offer the Supercomputing Institute's researchers access to state-of-the-art high-performance computing technology. In addition, the Supercomputing Institute is continuing its commitment to a diversified array of computing laboratories, collaborations, and programs. These include the Basic Sciences Computing Laboratory, the Scientific Development and Visualization Laboratory, the Medicinal Chemistry-Supercomputing Institute Visualization/Workstation Laboratory, and interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs in Scientific Computing and Computational Neuroscience.
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