 CAVS RECEIVES
A UTO A SSOCIATION
AWARD ......................... 2
ISSUE 1
VOLUME 2
YEAR 2010
 S UMMER REU P ROGRAM
B EGINS AT CCS ............. 2
 GRI DIRECTOR TOURS
DEEPWATERHORIZON O IL
S PILL S ITE .................... 3
Field
Points
NEW SLETTER OF THE
HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING COLLABORATORY
AT MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY
Mississippi State Supercomputer among World’s “Greenest”
Mississippi State University is now
home to one of the world's greenest supercomputers, according to the newly
released Green500 list.
The list ranks the MSU supercomputer, named Talon, as the most energy
efficient general-purpose supercomputer
in the world, and the ninth most
energy efficient system overall.
Green500 rates the world's most
powerful supercomputers by the
number of calculations performed
for every watt of power that they
consume.
"The top eight systems all
use very specialized IBM Cell
processors or hybrid GPU approaches to achieve their efficiency, and while those systems
are excellent for a limited set of
applications, they can't currently
be used for many of the things that
we do," said Trey Breckenridge,
computing office administrator for
the university's High Performance Computing Collaboratory, often referred to as
HPC2.
Talon is five times faster than the
university's previous fastest system,
while consuming less than one-half the
electricity, and performs nearly 420 mil-
lion calculations for every watt of electricity it uses.
The supercomputer is an IBM
iDataPlex cluster and has 3,072 processor cores, using six-core Intel Xeon
processors, and more than six terabytes
of RAM. It uses a high-speed quad data
rate InfiniBand network provided by
Voltaire Inc., and has a peak performance of more than 34 trillion calculations
per second.
"If you took a pen and paper, and
did one long division problem per second, working 24 hours a day, this com-
puter could calculate in one second what
it would take you one million years to do
by hand," Breckenridge said.
Talon is located at the HPC2 facility in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park
adjacent to the MSU campus in Starkville. The supercomputer will support research for the land-grant institution's Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Center for Computational Sciences, Geosystems Research Institute, and the Northern
Gulf Institute. The system will run a
broad set of applications for projects
including computational materials
analysis, computational fluid dynamics, hurricane prediction, and
computational biology.
Recently, Talon debuted on the
June 2010 Top500 Supercomputer
Sites List as the No. 331 most powerful computer in the world, and the
No. 18 fastest computer at any university in the nation. Mississippi is
ranked No. 8 nationally in total supercomputing power, with ranked systems
at MSU and at both the Army Corps of
Engineers and Navy DoD Supercomputing Resource Centers located in Vicksburg, and the NASA John C. Stennis
Space Center in Bay St. Louis.
The High Performance Computing Collaboratory at Mississippi State University
is comprised of 4 research centers:
CAVS - Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems
CCS - Center for Computational Sciences
GRI - Geosystems Research Institute
NGI - Northern Gulf Institute
High Performance Computing Collaboratory, Mississippi State University
www.hpc.msstate.edu
Auto Association honors
CAVS contributions
Automotive manufacturers and suppliers in the Magnolia State are honoring the Center for Advanced Vehicular
Systems at Mississippi State University for its contributions
to the industry.
CAVS recently received the 2010 Award of Excellence
from the Mississippi Automotive Manufacturers Association
for its leadership and support of MAMA's mission to grow,
develop and improve the auto industry in the state. Given
annually during MAMA's general meeting, nominations are
submitted by the organization's membership and voted on by
the board of directors.
"Auto manufacturing is a vital and growing part of the
region's economy. Meeting the needs of industry, fostering
research opportunities, and boosting the development of a
highly-skilled and tech-savvy workforce are essential priorities at CAVS," said Roger King, the center's director. "This
award illustrates the commitment Mississippi State University has to the people it serves, which dates to our founding in
1878 as the state's land-grant institution."
Mississippi Automotive Manufacturers Association board
member Glenn Boyce (third from left), president of Holmes
Community College, presented the 2010 Award of Excellence to Roger King (second from left), director of the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems at Mississippi State
University. Also pictured (from left) are Jill Sellers, MSU
CAVS Extension, Canton; King; Boyce; Gina Harvey, 2010
MAMA president; and Clay Walden, Robert Sheely and
Glen Dennis, all of the MSU CAVS Center in Canton.
Summer REU Program
sponsored by CCS
The Center for Computational Sciences and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Mississippi State University is hosting a summer REU (Research Experiences for
Undergraduates) program sponsored by the National Science
Foundation. This program is aimed at involving undergraduate students in active research under the supervision of
mathematicians and statisticians who are dedicated researchers and mentors.
The REU program targets undergraduate U.S. citizens
or permanent residents who have a background in multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and ordinary differential equations or probability. Women and students from underrepresented groups were particularly encouraged to apply.
The major concentration will be in applied mathematics
and biostatistics. This will include a discussion of image
processing, population dynamics, computational mathematical biology and highly stratified model in biostatistics. The
objectives are to provide the participants with meaningful
research experiences, to show them the enjoyment of doing
research, and to encourage them to pursue advanced degrees
in mathematical sciences. At the end of the program the participants will prepare written reports and give presentations
of their research. The program will be enhanced with various
scientific, cultural, and social activities. The faculty mentors
for this program are Drs. Hyeona Lim, R. Shivaji, Xingzhou
Yang, and Haimeng Zhang.
The 2010 Summer participants are:
John Corring, University of Southern Mississippi
Helene Duke, Providence College
Justin Hansen, University of Vermont
Emily Poole, University of Arkansas
Bonnie Roberson, Mississippi State University
Brittany Stephenson, Mississippi State University
Yicong Yong, University of Florida
High Performance Computing Collaboratory, Mississippi State University
www.hpc.msstate.edu
GRI Director gets Firsthand Look at
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Site
Dr. Robert Moorhead, Director, of Mississippi State University’s
Geosystems Research Institute, was among those who recently toured the
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill site courtesy of the Mississippi National
Guard.
The Mississippi National Guard provides flights for scientists, researchers, public officials and the media to see the incident site and affected coast line from Grand Isle to Dauphin Island. The purpose of the
flights is to help scientists, decision makers and media have a better sense
of what is occurring in the Gulf of Mexico. GRI scientists and researchers have been playing an active role in conducting studies and collecting
data with regards to the oil spill since its occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico back in April.
GRI Director, Dr. Robert Moorhead and Tina Miller-Way
from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab are among the particapants of a flight tour of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill site.
NGI Receives Allocation in First
Round of Funding to Study
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
The Northern Gulf Institute (NGI) will receive $10 million as part of BP's
commitment to pledge $500 million to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.
The funding will be used to study the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico.
NGI is a NOAA cooperative institute which is led by Mississippi State
University and partners with the University of Southern Mississippi, Louisiana
State University, Florida State University and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.
High Performance
Computing:
High performance computing
(HPC) is the use of
advanced computational
techniques with large-scale
computational, storage,
networking, and/or
visualization resources to
solve problems that are too
complex for standard
computing solutions.
Today, HPC systems
typically perform in excess of
one trillion floating point
operations per second, or
one teraFLOPS.
www.hpc.msstate.edu
High Performance Computing Collaboratory, Mississippi State University
www.hpc.msstate.edu
Upcoming Events
Monday - Friday, July 19 - 23, 2020:
Hands-on Engineering Academic Camp at CAVS
Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Thad Cochran Research, Technology, and Economic Development Park
Thursday, July 22, 2010:
CCS Sponsors two Lectures presented by Dr. Lalitha Venkataramanan, Research Scientist at Schlumberger Doll
Research, will present "Research in Applied Mathematics at Schlumberger"
High Performance Computing Building, Thad Cochran Research, Technology, and Economic Development Park
Wednesday - Friday, October 6 - 8, 2010:
CAVS co-Sponsors the Southern Automotive Conference with the Mississippi Automotive Manufacturers Association
Harrah’s Casino and Resort, Tunica, Mississippi
High Performance
Computing Collaboratory
Box 9627
2 Research Blvd.
Mississippi State, MS 39762
High Performance Computing Collaboratory, Mississippi State University
www.hpc.msstate.edu