[CLUE-Announce] CLUE North Meeting - 9/17/03 (Beowulf Cluster @ CU Denver)

[CLUE President]

Topic:  Beowulf Cluster @ CU Denver (abstract below).

Date:  9/17/03
Time:  7:00 pm
Location:  Regis University Adult Education Center
  + http://cluedenver.org/north/ for additional details.

This should be an intersting topic.  CLUE has been interested in Beowulf 
clusters for some time. 
Jeff

-- 
Colorado Linux Users and Enthusiasts (CLUE)
http://cluedenver.org/
Jeffery Cann, President


-------- Session Abstract -----------

The Beowulf Cluster at the University of Colorado at Denver

Jan Mandel and Russ Boice
Center for Computational Mathematics
University of Colorado at Denver

This talk will give an overview of the cluster, namely
- the hardware and software configuration
- what the choices were and why we ordered what we did
- what burned and why we did not make Top 500
- what eventually worked and how long it took
- what software projects we have
- what we would do the next time

The home page of the cluster is
  + http://www-math.cudenver.edu/ccm/beowulf/

Jan Mandel got his PhD in Numerical Mathematics in 1983 from the Charles 
University, Prague, Czechoslovakia, and has been a Professor of Mathematics 
at the University of Colorado at Denver since 1986. He has been the Director 
of the Center for Computational Mathematics since 2001.

He is an author or editor of six books and over sixty research papers.  His 
work has received over six hundred citations in scientific literature.  His 
main research area is iterative methods for large systems of linear algebraic 
equations and partial differential equations. His code was used in the design 
of the Swedish Grippen jet fighter, and another code he co-wrote is part of 
ANSYS, a major engineering simulation software. 

His curent work is on real-time simulation and prediction of nonlinear systems 
with uncertainty, in particular forest fires. Jan Mandel has started his 
computing career with a Russian Minsk-32 and real Teletypes, then progressed 
to IBM/360. He still has some old IBM/AIX and SUNs in dark corners and uses 
FORTRAN and C at times, but now he does most of his coding in Matlab.  He has 
been responsible for departmental computing since 1988 or so. In 2001, he has 
configured a Beowulf cluster, and is now supervising its system 
administration. He does not mind getting his hands dirty when the time allows 
but draws the line at recompiling Linux kernels, especially late at night.

Russ Boice Earned BSEET and MSSE degrees while working as an Electronics 
Specialist at Colorado State University - Pueblo. He enjoys figuring out how 
all kinds of things work and has been fortunate enough to be employed where 
he has had a chance to pursue this. He has followed the advancements in 
Computer technology from it's inception. This starting with teletype 
machines, through coding in Z80 assembler and currently working with a bunch 
of servers for the math department at the University of Colorado, Denver. He 
would like to get to the bottom of questions in cosmology.  One of his pet 
peeve is why cosmologists continue to talk about black holes forming, while 
knowing this cannot happen.