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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

For IU, lights go out at supercomputing conference

Challenge tests students’ cluster operating speed

When the power went out during the Supercomputing Conference Cluster Challenge, held Nov. 12 to Nov.14, junior Sarah Loos said the IU team’s first concern was the computers. \n“Our first thought is, ‘Oh, no, the cluster!’” she said, laughing. “Then our second thought is, ‘Oh no, it’s pitch black in here!’” \nLoos was part of a six-student IU group that traveled to the 21st annual Supercomputing Conference in Reno, Nev., to compete in the first year of the conference’s Cluster Challenge, which is specifically geared toward students who are undergraduates. The group, headed by Professor of Computer Science Andrew Lumsdaine, didn’t win this year, but Lumsdaine said that’ll be the goal for next year.\nLumsdaine formed the group from students in an independent study computing course. The students used the fall semester to study and then assemble nine Xserve computers provided by their partner company, Apple, into a cluster run by Apple’s OS X operating system. At the conference, the team, along with five other teams, competed to see how many applications each cluster could run in the 44 hours from 8 p.m. Nov. 12 to 4 p.m. Nov. 14. \nThe Supercomputing Conference, with vendor stations, competitions and demonstrations, highlighted the newest in high-performance computing technology. \nAt the start of the challenge, each team was first given a “benchmark” to test each cluster’s speed compared to the other clusters. The groups were then given three programs to run within the 44 hours. One program modeled chemical compounds and atoms, another simulated weather and the third created Pixar-like animation. Each group’s cluster was limited to 26 amps of power. After that, senior Andrew Schwenker said, each group was let loose. \n“We were given the programs, then the benchmark,” he said. “It was essentially open from there.” \nStudents took shifts manning the cluster, and each could only be in the convention center for 12 hours at a time. \nLoos said she had been to other smaller conventions and workshops, but nothing like the Supercomputing Challenge, which attracted more than 9,000 people. \n“They took this convention center and turned it into a small city,” she said, adding some computer vendors’ stations were two stories high. “It was interesting to be surrounded by so many people interested in things you were interested in.” \nHalfway through the challenge, the power went out in the convention center. The power outage, which officials told the teams was not caused by the conference, set teams back that were running all of the programs at once. \nFortunately, Loos said, IU’s team rebounded well because it was running a large number of short applications in the computer animation program. \nWhile the class was geared toward preparing the students and cluster for the challenge, Schwenker said students spent a lot of time working on the cluster outside class. Loos agreed, adding that, when the Cluster Challenge began, she felt it had already ended. \n“At that point I felt like the competition was already over,” she said. “We’d been working on the cluster the entire semester.” \nThe University of Alberta in Canada won the challenge. When it was over, Schwenker said the team went to an arcade to unwind. Loos said all of the teams went to the Blue Man group concert held at the end of the conference. After that, she said, she took a long nap. \nNow, Lumsdaine said, he and the students are looking at the cluster to see what went wrong and what went right at the competition, and then they will send the cluster back to Apple. Lumsdaine said he and a student group will be competing again. \n“We’re looking forward to doing it again next year,” Lumsdaine said. “And winning.”

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