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Research Computing

Grad Student Computing Cluster

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NACS provides and supports various computing resources and services for the UCI community. One noteworthy computing resource, GradEA, has been developed for the exclusive use of UCI graduate students. The intent is to provide graduate students with access to high-speed CPUs, large-data storage capacity, and advanced software.

GradEA consists of 11 dual-CPU Intel Xeon 2.0 GHz nodes, running the Red Hat Linux 8.0 operating system. The most recent hardware upgrade to GradEA occurred in January of this year and more are planned for the coming year. Software available on GradEA includes: Mathematica 4.2, MATLAB 6.5, IDL 5.4, SAS, IMSL, S+/R, the Portland Group compiler suite, MPICH (aka MPI) and Open PBS.

Programs on GradEA can be run in a single, or multi-CPU mode; the cluster network is interconnected by Gigabit ethernet. Users also have access to a disk-storage workspace of 700GB (Gigabytes).

By default, all graduate students have accounts on the GradEA cluster; try logging into gradea.uci.edu with your UCInetID and password. Further information is available at: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/gradea

Geographic Information Systems

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How many people between the ages of 18 and 24 with an income above $50,000 live within 4.5 miles of the Pacific Ocean between Oceanside and Redondo Beach? What is the proximity of children in a community, who have elevated concentrations of lead in their bodies, to older structures that might contain lead-based paint?

These questions, which require both spatial (i.e., geographic) data and tabular information to answer, are typical queries that can be posed to a Geographic Information System, or GIS. At its core, the GIS combines and employs two computer technologies: a graphical display of digital map features and a database that contains records which characterize each of those map features.

Simple queries can pull up data regarding a given geographic location or display all locations matching a criterion. More elaborate queries can be composed which allow researchers to detect new relationships (and derive new data) between things on the ground surface – or on any surface for that matter. GIS technology is used in support of such divergent applications as restoring ancient frescos and landing probes on Mars.

GIS use at UCI is relatively new, as is campus support for the growing interest in GIS. This year UCI purchased a campus-wide license for the use of ArcView and ArcGIS software (at no charge this year to researchers). ArcView and ArcGIS, the leading software in the GIS industry, are being installed on Windows-based computers in NACS’ laboratories and in various departmental laboratories around campus. GIS classes are in progress this year in Social Ecology, GSM and University Extension. Contact NACS for more information about GIS at UCI

Powerful new SGI Origin in Mathematics

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Professor Alexander Figotin of the UCI Mathematics Department has recently acquired a new SGI Origin2000 computer to provide the main computing resource for his research. The machine has been named “krein.math.uci.edu” after one of the most eminent mathematicians of our time, Mark Grigorievich Krein, who made many fundamental contributions in functional analysis and its applications. The system currently has 24 MIPS R10000 CPUs (soon to be upgraded to SGI’s latest and most powerful CPU, the MIPS R12000), 6 GBytes of memory and 54 GBytes of disk space. The Origin2000 scalable shared memory architecture has been optimized for parallel programs using either shared memory or the message-passing model. Extensive software development tools, including the C/C++ and Fortran90 compilers, are available with special features for developing efficient parallel programs.

The acquisition of this powerful new computer was funded from a Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) grant, along with campus and School of Physical Sciences matching funds. It is being jointly supported by the school and NACS. Professor Figotin’s research involves the calculation of electromagnetic spectral properties of photonic crystals.

Contact Don Frederick (Frederik@UCI.EDU) or Professor Figotin (Figotin@UCI.EDU) for more information about this acquisition.

Upgrade of Convex C3840

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Network & Academic Computing Services will soon upgrade the Convex C3840, the principal NACS numerical computation server, to a Hewlett-Packard Exemplar SPP2000 with 16 CPUs and 2 Gigabytes of memory. The SPP2000 will provide more than ten times the computing performance of the C3840 and will provide a comprehensive parallel computing environment for the first time within NACS for research and educational applications.

Major application software currently on the C3840 will also be available on the SPP2000 including MARC/MENTAT, Gaussian-94, GCG, and IMSL. In addition to these applications and compilers (Fortran90, C and C++), the new machine will have MPI (Message Passing Interface) and PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine), two widely used libraries for developing parallel applications based on message-passing. The Global Shared Memory (GSM) model for developing parallel applications is also supported in Fortran90. Assistance from NACS will be available to the current users of the C3840 for migration of their user-developed computer codes to the new machine.

NACS will be offering a variety of workshops and other educational opportunities on parallel computing using the SPP2000 in coming months. Please check the NACS Web page to obtain the latest information about the SPP2000. For additional information, please send e-mail to NACS@UCI.EDU, or contact Donald Frederick of NACS, FREDERIK@UCI.EDU or (949) 824-3200.

UCI Acquires 38 Powerful Unix Workstations

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Last month, UCI took delivery of 38 Digital Equipment Corporation AlphaStation 200 workstations. The workstations were acquired at substantially less than the normal educational price through a campus-wide purchase coordinated by NACS. The systems have 64 MB of RAM memory, 2 GB of disk space, and CPUs that run at 233 Mhz; they will be used for a variety of research and other purposes at UCI. NACS will be creating a new campus-wide graduate student computing service using 9 of the AlphaStations. The new workstations will also provide a platform for gaining additional parallel computing cluster experience at UCI.