EIA-9871053 Sameh, Ahmed Purdue University MRI: Acquisition of a Computational Environment for Scientific Computing This project proposes the acquisition of a multi-use computing platform to serve as a joint, top-of-the-line resource of cutting-edge research in high performance computing, geometric modeling and visualization and system software support for parallel computers. The proposed infrastructure consists of a 32 processor SGI Origin 2000 (with 195 MHz R10000 processors upgradable to 250 MHz R10000, and subsequently to 300 MHz R12000 processors) and Infinite Reality Graphics (two pipes). This infrastructure is an ideal platform for supporting various research activities. It provides system software designers with a memory organization on which they can test and develop software capable of optimizing applications for deep cache hierarchies. The distributed shared memory provides application developers an easy transition from serial to parallel programs using threaded and directive-based APIs while still supporting message passing libraries such as MPI. The infinite reality engines provide powerful graphics and visualization capabilities for supporting computer-intensive design and simulation applications. With the upgrade path to R12000 CPUs, the infrastructure is likely to remain a state-of-the-are computing facility for the next several years.
