Big-FE-teragrid-abstract

Big-FE - A cost and power efficient platform for high performance computing education

Alex Lemann(*), Josh McCoy(*), Tobias McNulty(*), Charles Peck. Cluster Computing Group, Earlham College.

Abstract:

There is a shortage of high performance computing resources for educational use. Big-FE, short for Focus on Education, is a complete design and hardware prototype for a cost effective, energy efficient, scalable high performance computing resource. Our design is a synergy of the classic Beowulf commodity-off-the-shelf cluster philosophy and the commercial, proprietary blade approach to computational cluster design. Big-FE leverages the strengths of each approach to provide a cost effective computing platform for computational science education. Big-FE uses a diskless compute node architecture running a Liberated Bootable Cluster CD single system image.

We measure the energy consumption of the Big-FE prototype and compare it with popular commercial high performance computing platforms. Our physical layout is organized to minimize both maintenance and cooling costs. We detail the cost structure, both up-front and on-going, and estimated performance for Big-FE and compare these with popular commercial high performance computing platforms.

Notes

• Topics to include:
  • Power consumption
  • Packaging and density
  • Cost of purchasing
  • Cost of ownership