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Press Release

Cornell University Offers “Parallel Optimization and Visualization for Ranger” Class


Contact: Paul Redfern
Cell: (607) 227-1865

FOR RELEASE: February 18, 2009

ITHACA, N.Y. – On Thursday and Friday, March 12-13, 2009, members of the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) will present a training class, “Parallel Optimization and Scientific Visualization for Ranger” at the Engineering Library “Blue Room” in Carpenter Hall on the campus of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

Ranger is a 3,936 node, 579 peak teraflop Linux Sun cluster, the first of the National Science Foundation Track2 high-performance computing systems available to the national research community. Any researcher at a U.S. institution may submit a proposal to request an allocation of computing cycles on Ranger.

“Day 1” of the training class will focus on remote visualization on Ranger. Topics will include:

  • Connecting to Ranger and launching basic visualization software
  • Understanding Sun Grid Engine (SGE) as it relates to visualization software
  • Launching parallel data servers on Ranger
  • Launching parallel graphics devices on Ranger
  • Hands-on training with parallel visualization software.

On “Day 2,” Ranger users will be introduced to the specific instrumentation and profiling steps required to undertake detailed performance analysis of MPI applications running on Ranger. The training will utilize standard packages available including TAU, PAPI, and mpiP to derive floating point, memory subsystem, and MPI application performance metrics. Instructors will present the instrumentation steps for an example application and users are encouraged to bring their own codes to work on during the latter half of the training session.

To register for the training class and for additional details, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/services/training/. If you have any questions, please submit them via the TACC Consulting System.

To submit a proposal requesting an allocation on the Ranger system, please visit TeraGrid Allocations.

The Cornell Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) receives support from the Cornell University, the National Science Foundation, DOD, USDA, and members of its corporate program.

The Ranger supercomputer is funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Cyberinfrastructure “Path to Petascale” program. The system is a collaboration among the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Computational Engineering and Science (ICES), Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, Arizona State University, and Cornell University.

Ranger is a key resource of the NSF TeraGrid (www.teragrid.org), a nationwide network of academic HPC centers, sponsored by the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure, which provides scientists and researchers access to large-scale computing power and resources. Teragrid is a partnership of people, resources and services that enables discovery in U.S. science and engineering by providing researchers with access to large-scale computing, networking, data-analysis and visualization resources and expertise.