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Purdue Plans a 1-Day Supercomputer "Barnraising"

Posted by timothy on from the bring-some-ethernet-and-some-lemonade dept.

An anonymous reader points out an article which says that "Purdue University says it will only need one day to install the largest supercomputer on a Big Ten campus. The so-called 'electronic barn-raising' will take place May 5 and involved more than 200 employees. The computer will be about the size of a semi trailer. Vice President for Information Technology at Purdue Gerry McCartney says it will be built in a single day to keep science and engineering researchers from facing a lengthy downtime." Another anonymous reader adds "To generate interest on campus, the organizers created a spoof movie trailer called 'Installation Day.'"

4 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Dumb by Spazmania · · Score: 3, Insightful

    built in a single day to keep science and engineering researchers from facing a lengthy downtime

    Sounds like poor planning to me. The correct way to keep science and engineering researchers from facing a lengthy downtime: don't turn off the old computer until the new one is running and tested.

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  2. Thin on details by NotBornYesterday · · Score: 2, Interesting

    TFA mentioned the Dell 2*quad Xeon hardware, but failed to mention what kind of storage will be attached to it, what kind of network(s) they plan to use to rope it all together, what OS & filesystem they plan to use, & other stuff that would be fun to know.

    If they don't tell us what they're using, how can we have flame wars over whose technology really should have been used in it? We'll be stuck with nothing to do but make up bad car analogies.

    It would be like, "GM is announcing a barnraising event today to build a new car. Over 200 people will all get together at once to assemble it. It is going to have 8 cylinders and burn gas."

    Sheesh.

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  3. Grammar Nazi says: by siphonophore · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The singular of "megaflops" is not "megaflop".

    //pet peeve

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  4. Re:Abe is the biggest cluster on a BigTen campus by navygeek · · Score: 2, Informative

    Someone need to go back and read (re-read?) the article. It says ABE is the biggest on a Big Ten campus. Purdue's will be the largest not connected to a national center. A semantic? Maybe, but it doesn't invalidate the claim.