Difference between revisions of "Intel-letter"

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As you know the overwhelming majority of HPC resources are dedicated to research rather than education.  This situation has put our group in a position where we spend a significant portion of our time designing and implementing software and hardware solutions to support teaching parallel and distributed programming and computational science.  The Bootable Cluster CD (http://bccd.cs.uni.edu) and Little-Fe (http://cluster.earlham.edu/projects.html) are two manifestations of our work.  The BCCD is a live CD that transforms an x86 or PowerPC based lab into an ad-hoc computational cluster.  Little-Fe is an inexpensive, portable, 4-8 node computational cluster.   
 
As you know the overwhelming majority of HPC resources are dedicated to research rather than education.  This situation has put our group in a position where we spend a significant portion of our time designing and implementing software and hardware solutions to support teaching parallel and distributed programming and computational science.  The Bootable Cluster CD (http://bccd.cs.uni.edu) and Little-Fe (http://cluster.earlham.edu/projects.html) are two manifestations of our work.  The BCCD is a live CD that transforms an x86 or PowerPC based lab into an ad-hoc computational cluster.  Little-Fe is an inexpensive, portable, 4-8 node computational cluster.   
  
In order to support computational science curriculum development and delivery we are gearing-up to build a number of Little-Fe units for use by science faculty across the country.  These faculty members, working with their undergraduate student researchers, will develop curriculum modules and deliver workshops and presentations in a variety of venues.  The principle cost component of the Little-Fe design is the motherboard.  Our design is based on small form-factor boards such as the Intel  
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In order to support computational science curriculum development and delivery we are gearing-up to build a number of Little-Fe units, approximately 20, for use by science faculty across the country.  These faculty members, working with their undergraduate student researchers, will develop curriculum modules and deliver workshops and presentations in a variety of venues.   
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The principle cost component of the Little-Fe design is the motherboard.  Our design is based on small form-factor motherboards, such as the Intel D945GPMLKR Media Series boards.  We wonder if Intel might be interested in either donating a number of these boards or permitting us to purchase them at a discount?  In exchange we could provide you with appropriate credit on both the physical units and in our various descriptions of the project.
  
  

Revision as of 12:06, 26 May 2006

Dr. Stephen Wheat, Director
HPC Platform Office
Intel, USA

Dr. Henry Neeman suggested that we write and describe our work in computational science education and our near-term needs. He thought there might be synergy between our goals and Intel's. We teach parallel and distributed programming workshops for the National Computational Science Institute (http://www.computationalscience.org). Recently we have been tasked by the SuperComputing conference series to design and implement the education program for the SC07-SC09 conferences.

As you know the overwhelming majority of HPC resources are dedicated to research rather than education. This situation has put our group in a position where we spend a significant portion of our time designing and implementing software and hardware solutions to support teaching parallel and distributed programming and computational science. The Bootable Cluster CD (http://bccd.cs.uni.edu) and Little-Fe (http://cluster.earlham.edu/projects.html) are two manifestations of our work. The BCCD is a live CD that transforms an x86 or PowerPC based lab into an ad-hoc computational cluster. Little-Fe is an inexpensive, portable, 4-8 node computational cluster.

In order to support computational science curriculum development and delivery we are gearing-up to build a number of Little-Fe units, approximately 20, for use by science faculty across the country. These faculty members, working with their undergraduate student researchers, will develop curriculum modules and deliver workshops and presentations in a variety of venues.

The principle cost component of the Little-Fe design is the motherboard. Our design is based on small form-factor motherboards, such as the Intel D945GPMLKR Media Series boards. We wonder if Intel might be interested in either donating a number of these boards or permitting us to purchase them at a discount? In exchange we could provide you with appropriate credit on both the physical units and in our various descriptions of the project.



Thank-you for your time.

Paul Gray
David Joiner 
Thomas Murphy 
Charles Peck