Tech takes next step in supercomputing
Virginia Tech computer science professor Wu Feng with HokieSpeed, the university’s newest supercomputer. Courtesy of Virginia Tech.
Over the past decade Virginia Tech has worked hard to climb to the top of the heap of national - and international – research institutions, and it turns out that supercomputing is a major rung on the ladder.
Tech’s College of Engineering this week announced the development of HokieSpeed, a supercomputer still undergoing final testing that is expected to rank among the fastest computers in the country, according to a university news release.
“This instrument will empower faculty, students, and staff across disciplines to tackle problems previously viewed as intractable or that required heroic efforts and significant domain-specific expertise to solve,” said Wu Feng, a Tech computer science professor and developer of HokieSpeed.
The new computer cost $1.4 million to build and was primarily funded through a $2 million National Science Foundation grant. It is thought to rank 96th among the nation’s Top 500 supercomputers, according to current information.
HokieSpeed, like other Tech supercomputers, is expected to attract more international research projects and grants. As state funding for higher education has declined, many public universities such as Tech are looking to research as a new revenue stream.
Cutting edge computing is a mainstay of that research, from cancer research at Tech’ Virginia Bioinformatics institute and its Shadowfax supercomputer designed for life science research, to physics and engineering research done on computers such as HokieSpeed.
Making important scientific discoveries today requires enormous computational power and storage capacity. Supercomputers store vast databases of biological and scientific information, as well as analyze data and solve complex equations, said Skip Garner, director of VBI.
Tech has a relatively long history of developing supercomputers, including the 2003 announcement of System X, the first Macintosh “cluster” included in the nation’s Top 500 supercomputers.
System X cost roughly $5 million to build, which at the time was a bargain among top-performing supercomputers.
HokieSpeed is not only cheaper, the release stated, but it is up to 22 times faster and less than a quarter of the size of System X.
The Roanoke Times | 381-1675
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