Sun Donation Spurs Linux Cluster at Purdue

An anonymous reader writes "Purdue University, with a $3.6 million gift from Sun Microsystems, is giving recycled PCs new life as a computer cluster that makes high-performance computing power available in undergraduate classes. 'Previously, my students could only do what I'd describe as 'proof' animations - small, low-resolution and not presentation quality,' [Professor Richard] Paul said. 'With access to this computing power, the students will be able to ship their software files of instructions to the Linux cluster, and it will come back in three or four hours with modeling, lighting and animation. Students will get to experience the whole thing in terms of scale and presence, and they can do longer animations.' More images of the current Linux cluster and other servers at Purdue are out there."

Comments

LOCs?

[seanadams.com]

'With access to this computing power, the students will be able to ship their software files of instructions to the Linux cluster, and it will come back in three or four hours with modeling, lighting and animation

I'm sure glad he didn't use an arcane technical word like "program". That sure would have confused the layman. By the way, how many Libraries of Congress can the cluster store?

this makes me laugh

[narkotix]

In addition to the Sun Mircosystems gift, Morgan J. Burke, director of intercollegiate athletics, will announce a $1.2 million gift from Cisco Systems Inc. that is enabling Purdue sports fans to access real-time football game data via wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs)

havent they heard of a little device called an AM radio?

Just like the old days

[Saint Aardvark]

"Previously, my students could only do what I'd describe as 'proof' animations small, low-resolution and not presentation quality," Paul said. "With access to this computing power, the students will be able to ship their software files of instructions to the Linux cluster, and it will come back in three or four hours with modeling, lighting and animation. Students will get to experience the whole thing in terms of scale and presence, and they can do longer animations."

Interesting...like what used to happen with print jobs. How long 'til a student goes to the sysadmin on duty asking for their animation job to be niced down a point or two?

Re:What are these?

[Jeremy Erwin]

2 racks of "Origin 2000" super computer nodes.
1 rack of "Onyx 2" visualization nodes

It's questions like these that the high resolution pics are designed to answer. Gaze upon those blinking lights, mere mortal.

Re:Why Perdue?

[Nick of NSTime]

What is an impoverished person going to do with a supercomputer? High-powered calculations of negative numbers?