By ANDRIANNA MARSTON

alm045@latech.edu

 

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology hosted its first IBM p5 Series supercomputer three-day workshop Jan. 10-12.

The supercomputer is a part of LONI, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, a statewide fiber-optics network connecting International Business Machines’ supercomputers among five Louisiana universities, such as Tulane University-New Orleans and Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge.

Box Leangsuksun, an associate professor of computer science, said the main objectives of the workshop was to bring awareness of the IBM supercomputer that Tech will soon receive for its academic community and will provide hands-on training of how supercomputing can be a powerful tool to help improve research productivity at Tech.

“LONI will serve as the high-performance computing piece that will revolutionize collaborative university research by allowing computing speeds to increase 1,000 times faster than what it is now [at our university],” Leangsuksun said.

About 30 people were registered to attend the workshop conference, Leangsuksun said.

“There was a mix of professors, graduates, undergraduates, and we also sent out invitations to other Louisiana universities,” Leangsuksun said.

The agenda was designed to reach beginning and advanced users, he said.

“The first two days were broad and useful for audiences who plan to develop better skills with using the supercomputer,” Leangsuksun said. “And day three we focused more on advanced users.”

As one of the first states to get this new emerging technology, Leangsuksun said they need to educate people as much as possible.

“We are hoping to continue educating our community in supercomputing and promoting the availability and usefulness of such powerful computing infrastructure,” Leangsuksun said.

Students who have been researching with Leangsuksun have learned supercomputing is not just for computer scientists and information technologist.

Anand Tikotekar, a graduate student in computer science, said students pursuing degrees in fields such as mathematics, physics and chemistry would find the program useful.

“If a student wanted to model a complex mathematics problem, this will be a good network to use,” Tikotekar said.

Raju Gottumukkala, a doctoral student in computational analysis and modeling, said supercomputing speeds up research process.

“For students trying to complete extensive research with another school, supercomputing will speed up the online process,” Gottumukkala said. “Instead of the research taking months to finish, supercomputing will reduce the process down to weeks.”