Education

Universities are distinct among sophisticated computing environments because the diversity and depth of the user community is so great. You, as an individual interested in Penguin solutions, might be a professor in computer science, a post-doc, a grad student or an undergraduate assigned to research the best products available. Or you could be an IT system administrator who knows the buying decision must ensure what is purchased today can be used and expanded upon far into the future, regardless of grant cycles or other factors.

• Demand always exceeds supply of shared supercomputer time.
• Some problems require extensive parameter studies or simulation on massively parallel applications to validate models.
• Many problems are too large and complex for your older PCs or SMP machines reaching the end of their lifecycles.
• You may need to administer your own system if sufficient staff or students aren’t available.
• Budgets are generally constrained or timing affected by grant cycles.

As a researcher, you want to think about what caused the “big bang” compared to other theories rather than simply crunch numbers. The fastest, most accurate computing for the budget is what’s needed. Departmental size clusters, that permit multiple researchers to easily share the system, allow you to obtain fast results while others ponder their own ideas.

If your institution is a long-time user of cluster technology, you may be building large interconnected cluster installations so a wide variety of potential users can benefit. Effectively managing this distributed model is key to enabling its success. This means both the reliability and scalability of the hardware and the power of the management software is critical.

If you’re an IT professional, you support users who range from novice to expert, running applications that include everything from business administration to productivity software. Chances are the selection, purchase, and installation of specialized HPC installations fall outside your IT organization. Yet, when something goes wrong, the IT department is often asked to participate in solving the crisis. You face many of the same issues as commercial organizations, with the added twist that your end users are capable of actively changing software code and altering system configurations without requiring the advice or consent of the IT department. Tools that can give you added visibility into the operation and provisioning of these systems are extremely valuable.

As a researcher in a commercial, government or university research lab you probably use custom codes to simulate processes, validate models, analyze, and present the data you’re studying. You simulate particular problems, building on proven algorithms or inventing new ones to test your hypotheses. Models are validated against large experimental data sets, or sanity-checked by parametric studies.

As part of your vendor evaluation, our Penguin engineers will help you benchmark the performance of your specific applications and problems on our equipment. Our Professional Services Group can support you through installation, shakedown and on-going provisioning.