The College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts unveiled the purchase of Cyclops, a new supercomputer system, this Monday. Its claim to fame is the ability to perform five billion math operations in one second.
The supercomputer was purchased from Plymouth-based Microway Corporations. It gets the name Cyclops because it's made up of 608 linked processors but has only one computer screen, much like the one-eyed beast.
To grasp the enormous potential of such a machine, consider the following: each processor has at least an equal, if not greater, computational capability to that of every human in the world combined. It can be used to find solutions to questions one may never have thought answerable.
Cyclops can determine how much air will move through a jet engine or examine a crack in a bridge and determine the precise moment the bridge will fail.
The $120,000 HPC Linux cluster supercomputer was sought after and eventually purchased by engineering Dean Michael Malone.
"Forward-thinking investments by Dean Malone keep UMass at the leading edge of engineering research and education," said Blair Perot, director of the theoretical and computational fluid dynamics laboratory in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering.
Perot was on hand during the introductory ceremony Monday. Also in attendance were several of Perot's graduate students, who have access to the Department of Defense and National Science Foundation's supercomputers across the country. The students presented posters of the work they've been doing with the computers and what they plan to do now that they have access to Cyclops.
Some of the planned projects include simulations of turbulence in fluids and simulations of flow over a wind turbine. One student plans to use the computer to take a closer look at algorithms for DNA sequencing.
Because of their knowledge and access to supercomputers, the graduate students will have no problem using Cyclops, said Perot.
Two of Perot's undergraduate students will also have access to the supercomputer as part of independent study research projects.
Chris Shores can be reached at cshores@student.umass.edu
Be the first to comment on this article!