To help manage the hardware in the
cluster, Mader leverages the capabilities
of HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO)
software. “iLO integrates nicely with
Bright Cluster Manager, which we are
using to manage the cluster,” Mader says.
“Bright is fully aware of all the hardware
and can manage it accordingly.”
Mader considers the newly deployed
cluster a first step on a path that will lead
to a larger environment as demand for
the center’s HPC resources grows among
academic researchers, most of whom do
work on government-funded contracts,
and the automotive parts manufacturers
who can’t afford the HPC resources and
licenses on their own.
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working collaboratively with NCMS to
select the hardware configuration.
The cluster is built around an HP
ProLiant DL380p head node and
powered by 12 HP ProLiant SL230s
Gen8 server trays with Intel® Xeon®
processor E5-2670 in an HP ProLiant
SL6500 scalable system. The cluster
uses a TrueScale InfiniBand interconnect
provided by Intel®. The HPC system’s
primary application is LS-DYNA software
from LSTC for crash simulations.
The center rolled out the 12-node system
in 2013, after it moved to George Mason
University from its longtime home at
The George Washington University, says
Jason Mader, the computer scientist who
manages the IT environment for CCSA.
He notes that the center immediately got
a 25% increase in per-core performance
over its earlier system at The George
Washington University, thanks to the
use of next-generation Intel® Xeon®
processor E5-2670 and improvements
in code. The center’s previous three-year-old cluster was based on the Intel®
Xeon® processor 5600 series.
This is a fitting role for the two centers,
which have complementary goals.
CCSA supports the U.S. Department of
Transportation’s strategic goal to reduce
fatalities and injuries on the nation’s
roadways. NCMS, in turn, is the driving
force behind a national strategy to make
HPC resources available to small and
midsize manufacturers across the country.
The combination of the resources
and expertise of the two centers
opens up new opportunities for SMB
manufacturers who make many of the
parts that go into the larger products
created by global original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs). They can now
access the HPC resources and leading
modeling and simulation applications to
make their vehicle components safer and
more reliable.
“Among small and medium-size
companies, even those with 2,000
employees, just a sliver of them—3% or
4%—have even basic simulation tools,
beyond desktop,” says Jon Riley. “Our
mission is to look for avenues where we
can introduce the technology, document
the value, help them explore the return
on investment, and then give them an
enabling mechanism to affordably access
these technologies and explore their
benefits in real-life applications.”
The focus of the initiative is very much
on the applied research that will lead
to better products, as opposed to more
theoretical explorations.
“We’re not looking at basic research
here. Small and medium-size companies
are thinking day to day, week to week,
month to month, maybe year to year.
They are not looking out 10, 12 years.
So we’re trying to work in a very applied
way to get solutions into their hands,”
says Jon Riley, Vice President for Digital
Manufacturing, National Center for
Manufacturing Sciences.
The initial environment
CCSA’s initial HPC cluster on the Mason
campus was designed by HP engineers
Intel’s Catalin Morosanu and HP’s Philippe Trautmann talk about the High
Performance Computing Centre located in Grenoble, France.
www.hp.com/go/hpc
HP + Intel Centre of Excellence for
High Performance Computing