By ANDRIANNA MARSTON

alm045@latech.edu

 

Thanks to a new deal with Dell, Tech will add more computers to the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative system, which will give computing capacity a significant boost.

Les Guice, vice president of research and development and chair of the LONI management council, said six computers will be added to the LONI system, which will run approximately five trillion operations per second.

“We are also adding another machine that will have a peak capacity of approximately 50 trillion operations per second,” Guice, also a professor of civil engineering, said.

“We are not exactly sure how fast all of this will operate when connected to LONI, but the total computing power we will have is approximately 85 trillion operations per second.”

According to a Board of Regents press release, Governor Kathleen Blanco said the computing power should spark the interest of companies the state is trying to attract.

“These enhancements to LONI’s computing power will make the network particularly attractive to the kinds of companies we need here to energize our state’s high-tech economy,” Blanco said.

Guice said if researchers look at the world’s supercomputing rankings, only a few national laboratory computers have a total capacity higher than 85.

“Supercomputers are designed to have much faster processing speeds than those on a desk or in your lap,” Guice said.

“The computers use very fast processors and are designed to work together and solve problems.”

Guice said other LONI participating Louisiana universities, such as Tulane, Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge, Southern-Baton Rouge, University of New Orleans and University Louisiana-Lafayette, will also receive six clusters of the Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers.

Each of these universities should see benefits as well.

Guice said Dell put together an aggressive deal, which cost the state approximately $7.5 million.

However, financing cost would have been over $10 million if it was not for the good relationship the school has with Dell and IBM.

“We’ve had excellent relationships with IBM, who provided LONI with its first supercomputers, and Dell was just the one who thought it was important for their company to be a leader in this space,” Guice said.

Christopher Washington, a senior computer science major, said it is important for computer science to keep up with the advancement of the world.

“It is very important that computer science enhances and keeps evolving because researchers have different fields, such as bioinformatics, [nano-technology] and other engineering and science projects, which are expanding every day,” Washington said.

He said computer science works with programs from medicine to security, and without the proper tools, equipment and computing capacity research efforts will not be effective.

Washington said, “Unless we get the advancements and proper research computing capacity on computers, researchers can’t proceed any further than where we are today.”