By Laura Pelner
Summer Reporter

Purdue's new supercomputer will be one of the nation's most powerful computers, according to the director of Purdue's computing center.

John Steele, the director, said that the computer will put Purdue back in to the supercomputing world because the system will be in the top 10 percent of the most powerful systems in the nation. With the equipment Purdue will also become one of the leaders at individual universities.

Purdue will receive the new $10 million supercomputer, which it is purchasing from IBM, later this month. However, Purdue will only be paying $2.9 million for the computer, despite the list price of $10 million.

Steele said that Purdue's acquiring the supercomputer was made possible by significant grants from IBM. "We have a longstanding relationship with IBM, we've had IBM computers at Purdue for almost forever, dating back to 1963."

Paying the $2.9 million is primarily made possible through technology funds available from the state through legislative processes, said Jim Almond, the vice president for business services and the assistant treasurer.

The supercomputer will be delivered this month and it should be installed and functioning before the fall semester, said Steele.

Bill Whitson, the assistant director for research computing, said "we expect to start getting some of the components in within the next couple of weeks and hope to start the installation in the last week of June. We definitely intend to have it in production by the beginning of the fall semester."

The supercomputer will have a big impact on research, and those who conduct it on campus. It will help with projects that require a lot of computation and simulation. Therefore, those in the sciences, engineering and computer science will be using it most often because they can apply the speed and capacity of the system, said Steele.

Carol Post, a professor in medicinal chemistry, will be using the supercomputer when it arrives to do simulations of the human rhinovirus, which is the virus that causes the common cold. She hopes to improve drugs that fight the common cold through the work.

Post said she is very excited because the supercomputer "is going to make a very big improvement on the types of research that we can do and the size of the problem that we can study by computation."

Steele said that some students may also be able to use the computer in their advanced courses in computer science and engineering. In some of those classes students learn about supercomputing and its techniques so the equipment will be helpful.

The supercomputer will bring a lot of prestige to the University. Whitson said that it's a world class machine, and a real plus in terms of being able to attract some of the top faculty and students.

Post agreed and said when Purdue gets the new equipment it will be an attraction for the University. "It will help attract good researchers, faculty and students, and it will improve the total research environment of the campus."

The supercomputer is very powerful, about 15 times more powerful then the system we have now, said Whitson.

Therefore, the new system will be an upgrade of the current one. "We've used the smaller version of the system for a couple of years, we're upgrading now," said Steele.

The supercomputer will have 272 central processing units (CPU's) and will have the capacity to perform 396 billion arithmetic operations per second.

A central processing unit is essentially like the brain of a computer, and usually most desktop personal computers only have one. The supercomputer's 272 processors will be able to be used in parallel computing. This means they will have the ability to all work together at the same time and subdivide a task into separate problems, but share the information among themselves and put it all together in the end, explained Whitson.

In order to keep the machine in the forefront of the supercomputer business upgrades are going to be necessary every so often. "If we can upgrade it regularly it will remain in that status," said Steele.

To that end he also said "the intent is to try to upgrade it regularly and keep it modern enough and powerful enough to be a supercomputer class machine."

"We're very excited that we're going to have the opportunity to make this available to the Purdue community," said Whitson.

When the supercomputer arrives it will be housed in the Mathematical Sciences Building where there is already space and power available.