Wright State University’s HPC Cluster: ‘It’s here. It’s Ready.”

Wright State University has just announced that its new high performance computing cluster is ready to support research across campus.

“It’s here. It’s ready,” said Amit Sharma, an assistant professor of physics who led efforts to get the cluster. “I’m delighted.”

Advanced Clustering Technologies built and installed the Wright State cluster. It consists of 36 computer nodes — 2U Dual Xeon base system with 2x Intel Ten Core Xeon processors, 128GBRAM, 48TB of hard disks with 42TB usable storage and 1GPU node with 2x Nvidia Tesla — connected together via FDR InfiniBand networking capable of communicating at 56Gbps.

The cluster was made possible by a $150,000 National Science Foundation grant from its Major Research Instrumentation program along with a $60,000 match from various Wright State colleges and departments.

Sharma said he plans to use the cluster for his research projects, which include a study of the ionosphere, a project that uses quantum chemistry calculations and involves lasers, and a study of the structure of alloys that requires density functional theory calculations.

Use of the cluster for other research from around campus includes materials modeling, oil exploration, medical imaging, microbial ecology, human cognition and analysis of psychological data.

Advanced Clustering has built several recent HPC clusters to facilitate campus-wide research efforts at universities such as Oklahoma State University, University of Southern Mississippi, and Clarkson University.