Parallel Computing Clusters

The University of Central Florida , in partnership with the Hewlett Packard Corporation, provides state-of-the-art computational facilities in the hp CHAMPS Laboratory. The control room of the laboratory contains two high-performance, parallel computing clusters. In late 2005 the lab acquired a 20 compute node XC cluster where each node includes dual processors. Each 2.2 GHz processor is equipped with two gigabyte of RAM and a 40 gigabyte hard drive. At the end of 2007 three more nodes were added, each with two 2.2 GHz dual cores, bringing the total to 52 CPUs. The system includes high speed networking by InfinBand . (As a performance example, this cluster permits the simulation of one year of depth-integrated tidal hydrodynamics running a four-second time step on a finite element mesh that extends from the deep Atlantic to over 100 miles upstream in the St. Johns River with 73,279 computational points to be performed in less than 18 hours of real time.) A second cluster acquired in late 2001 includes a master node with twelve-units, where each 600 MHz DEC-Alpha processor is equipped with one gigabyte of RAM and a 30-gigabyte hard drive. These machines can be run in serial or as a high-speed parallel system with Myrinet networking technology. The clusters include network-attached storage for system backup and an uninterruptible power supply for reliability. All tolled, over a quarter-of-a-million dollars worth of equipment is available in the control room alone.

Personal Computers and Workstations

The main room of this computational laboratory houses eight PCs, two high resolution printers (color & black/white), a networked projector, and a conference table.  Here graduate students and faculty are well equipped to work in concert.  The PCs include six xw4400 (1.86 GHz dual cores with 4.0 GB RAM, mirrored 160 GB hard-drives and 19" flat panel monitors) and two hp xw4100 (3.0 GHz with 2.0 GB RAM and 17" flat panel monitors).