High Performance Computing Symposia at Lehigh

Computation is considered the third important leg supporting modern scientific research. Along with theory and experimentation, computational modeling is vital to scientific advancements providing crucial added insight and rigor, unavailable through direct experimental observation. For the past five years, the University’s Library and Technology Services Department (LTS) and High Performance Computing Steering Committee (HPC-SC) have hosted a one day program (see archives) to advance the understanding of scientific computing and train new researchers on available resources on and off-campus. Due to the success of previous HPC Days and an interest in exploring what it would take to create an inter-departmental Center for Computational Engineering and Sciences, the HPC-SC has expanded the 2011 HPC Symposium to two full days, April 14 - 15, 2011.

The overall goal of the revamped two-day event is to develop a network of researchers who explore high-end computational developments and methodologies for those who rely upon high-performance technologies to accomplish critical tasks. On the Symposium’s first day, Thursday, we will host Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) instructors who will provide a full day, hands-on Message Passing Interface (MPI) Programming tutorial, currently the dominant programmatic interface to taking advantage of distributed multi-processor/multi-core cluster technology. By extending the instructional time from three to six hours, participants will be exposed to a more detailed introduction involving real world examples, demonstrating the use of the basic MPI software library calls. Participants are also encouraged to bring their own code and seek advice from the instructors. We hope they will walk away with the tools necessary to take advantage of the parallel computing facilities available to them at Lehigh.

On the second day, Friday, the Symposium will be devoted to regional speakers invited from outside Lehigh with a keynote speaker after lunch. The focus is to foster a gathering of preeminent researchers from all disciplines of science and engineering, where they can broaden their appreciation of the pervasiveness of computational methods in science and engineering research, and explore related challenges and opportunities. This year’s Symposium Keynote Speaker will be Russ Miller, who maintains appointments as Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at SUNY-Buffalo, senior scientist at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, and adjunct professor in the departments of Structural Biology and Electrical Engineering at SUNY-Buffalo. Professor Miller's research interests include cyberinfrastructure, parallel algorithms, image analysis, and computational crystallography.

Some previous HPC Day keynote speakers have brought their expertise and vision to Lehigh on climate modeling (Dr. Richard Loft, National Center for Atmospheric Research), the use of robotics in oceanographic research (Professor John Delaney, University of Washington), data visualization (Dr. Kelly Gaither, University of Texas, TACC Teragrid Facility), and what are some of the extremely large scale computing problems (Professor David Bader, Georgia Institute of Technology). Additionally, these events have provided a forum for open discussions with senior University administrative personnel, as well as provided new faculty members a valuable forum in which to show off the computational research interests that they have brought to many departments around campus, which include Earth and Environmental Sciences, Physics, Computer Science, Mechanical and Chemical Engineering.

Registration is free but will be required for planning purposes.

This AMD Opteron chip with 8 computer cores is the basis of a new Lehigh cluster with a total of 1040 2.0 GHz processor cores, 2.8 TB’s of RAM, and 140 TB’s of disk storage.

Posted on: February 23rd, 2011