Special Features:
JOINT VENTURE PONDERS LINUX
ENGINEERING GRID
A supercomputing joint venture plans to decide in the near future on a
tender
for what it claims is the first large cluster in Australia dedicated to
computational engineering.
The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC) is considering
obtaining a Linux-based cluster to service a multi-million dollar, three-to-
five year contract with Holden at the car manufacturer's new Innovation Centre
at Fisherman's Bend in Melbourne.
According to VPAC, the supercomputing cluster would be able to sustain 150
gigaflops or 150 billion floating point operations per second. Each of the
cluster's processors would handle up to four gigaflops.
VPAC executives said a Linux solution was the more likely option, despite
the
fact proprietary Unix was presently the platform of choice for large-scale
technical computing systems. The majority of VPAC's existing supercomputer
assets already operate on Linux, indicating the strength of the consortium's
preference for open source over proprietary operating systems.
Holden Australia announced the partnership with VPAC in December as part of
its Holden Innovation initiative.
The car manufacturer's initiative involves the establishment of a new
research
and development hub -- a single, stand-alone operation developing future
vehicles, new products, and manufacturing technology and concept vehicles.
The development hub will cover three general areas:
- Product Concept Synthesis
- Product Concept Execution
- Innovation in Technology
VPAC said the manufacturer had entered the arrangement as it did not have a
lot of expertise in high-performance computing and was anxious to reduce
development time for new products and services.
The new supercomputing cluster will complement a supercomputing
infrastructure
comprising a 194-processor IBM Linux cluster, a 128-processor Hewlett-Packard
Alphaserver SC, a 12-processor HP Linux cluster and several multiprocessor
machines.
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