To promote parallel computing among Ohio faculty, the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), its Statewide Users Group, and the Ohio Board of Regents are soliciting a third round of Cluster Ohio faculty research proposals. OSC will distribute Athlon AMD computer system clusters -- complete with hardware, software programming environment, and maintenance -- to this year’s Cluster Ohio awardees. Proposals are due on January 14, 2004.
Each time an OSC system is upgraded, the existing system is separated and distributed to Cluster Ohio proposal awardees. In the first revision, OSC provided a number of Pentium III systems. For Cluster Ohio Rev2, OSC provided Itanium (64 bit) systems. For Rev3, OSC will provide five AMD Athlon clusters, each with 24 compute nodes, one login node, and one storage node.
At today's prices, the cost of a comparable cluster would be approximately $100,000.
“This program was originally going to occur every 24 months, but we’ve decided to up the frequency,” said Doug Johnson, OSC Systems Developer and Engineer. “More frequent installs provide more opportunities to researchers around the state.”
Faculty members of Ohio higher education academic institutions (four-year and graduate programs) are eligible to apply for the Cluster Ohio grants. Faculty members are expected to make a commitment in the form of space, power, and basic system administration. They are also expected to make idle cycles available to the Ohio research community, and participate in a statewide Globus (or similar) environment.
"Past responses have fostered innovative cluster and grid computing activities,” said Leslie Southern, OSC’s High Performance Computing Director. “Watching this program build a strong cluster community is exciting. The quality of this round of proposals will surely challenge the review committees."
More information is available at http://oscinfo.osc.edu/clusterohio/rfp/.
Deadlines for Cluster Ohio Rev3:
| Week of October 3, 2000 | Release of the Call for Proposals |
| January 14, 2004, 5:00 p.m. | Proposals due |
| January 15-29, 2004 | Review Process |
| January 30, 2004 | Award announcements |
| February - April 2004 | PIs prepare physical facilities and schedule deliveries |
