The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) takes delivery today of a 32 processor CRAY T3D -- an entry-level massively parallel processing (MPP) system. The system will be closely coupled with a CRAY Y-MP2E parallel vector supercomputer system installed at the same time. The new CRAY system fits well into OSC's existing CRAY Y-MP8/864 and Y-MP-EL/332 computing environment.
According to OSC director Dr. Charles F. Bender, the 32-processor system is the smallest version of the CRAY T3D product line, which is available in sizes up to 2048 processors. "This entry-level version will enable us to test the applicability of massively parallel processing to the important research projects of Ohio industry and higher education," he said.
Cray Research, Inc. (CRI) and OSC have entered into a joint agreement to develop advanced applications software for science and industry. The research collaboration calls for OSC to establish a multi-disciplinary team consisting of existing staff with expertise in systems programming, training, computational chemistry, computational fluid flow, and finite element analysis. CRI provides training as well as staff to collaborate on the project, which has a three-year duration.
A group of 12 research projects is slated for this joint project. As an example, Dr. Thanasis Ziliaskopoulos, an assistant professor in Civil Engineering at The Ohio State University, will be leading a team to research Traffic Simulator Issues for Real-Time Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) Applications.
IVHS has three main operations: 1) collection of information from the street network by using advanced sensor technologies, such as closed circuit television and image processing; 2) processing the information with network equilibration algorithms, routing algorithms and traffic control methods so that optimum recommendations can be generated; and 3) transmission of the secondary information to the users by various means, such as on-board equipment, variable message signs, radio advisory, and cable TV.
According to Ziliaskopoulos, "We strongly believe that CRAY T3D's architecture can be effectively utilized to reduce the total computation time to levels acceptable for real-time implementations. This product can be used not only as an off-line tool for evaluation, but also as an on-line tool for real-time traffic assignment schemes."
"Over the years, OSC and CRI have had many successful joint research projects and we are pleased that OSC, which is already a Cray customer, has chosen to continue its relationship with Cray Research and our heterogeneous CRAY T3D system on these innovative research projects," said Cray chairman and CEO John F. Carlson. "We will fully support the goals of this collaboration."
OSC is a state-funded shared resource of high performance computing available to scientists and engineers, both academic and commercial. Since 1987, OSC has been committed to providing the latest computational tools and technologies to industry and higher education.
Cray Research creates the most powerful, highest-quality computational tools for solving the world's most challenging scientific and industrial problems.
