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Systems & Resources

Virginia Tech strives to be one of the top research universities in the U.S. and contributes a variety computing resources toward that goal.

In addition to systems and resources available through Information Technology, the following groups also provide resources in support Advanced Research Computing at Virginia Tech:

  • CHECS -- Center for High-End Computing Systems
  • ICAM -- Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics
  • LASCA -- Laboratory for Advanced Scientific Computing and Applications
  • 3DI Group -- "Three-Dimensional Interaction" Group
  • LIVE -- Laboratory for Information Visualization and Evaluation
  • VT Cave Virginia Tech's virtual reality theater
  • Virginia Bioinformatics Institute's CCF -- Core Computational Facility

Central Compute Server Systems

System X
Hardware Details

Compute Nodes: 1100 Apple Xserve G5 cluster nodes with the following specifications:

  • Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC 970FX processors
  • 4 GB ECC DDR400 (PC3200) RAM
  • 80 GB S-ATA hard disk drive
  • One Mellanox Cougar InfiniBand 4x HCA*
* HCA added from third party and not a build-to-order option

Compile Nodes: 3 Apple Xserve G5 nodes with the following specifications:
  • Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC 970FX processors
  • 4 GB ECC DDR400 (PC3200) RAM
  • 3x250 GB S-ATA hard disk drive

Inferno

The Inferno systems are SGI Enterprise ALTIX 3700 Superclusters which provides Virginia Tech researchers with access to high performance computing on an SGI hardware platform:

InfernoInferno2Property
20 - 1.3 GHz128 - 1.6 GHzItanium processors, each with 3 MB of cache
32 GB 512 GBMemory
36 GB 72 GBInternal Disk Storage
500 GB 1.5 GBRAID Disk Storage

Cauldron

Cauldron is a SGI ALTIX 4700 Supercluster which provides Virginia Tech researchers with access to high performance computing on an SGI hardware platform.

  • 64 - 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 CPUs with 4 MB of cache
  • 320 GB of memory

Note:  This system was purchased using by contributions from the Research Division, Information Technology, and the College of Science (Mathematics, Geosciences, Chemistry and PIs)

Dante

Dante is a Sun Fire v480 system running Solaris 9 which provides Virginia Tech researchers with access to high performance computing on a Sun Microsystems hardware platform and supports IMSL, SAS, MATLAB, and R which are not currently available on the VT compute server Inferno. The Dante system currently contains:

  • Four 900 MHz CPUs
  • 16 GB memory
  • Two 36 GB fiber-channel drives
  • External storage on the Virginia Tech NAS.

Styx

Styx is a Sun Fire v490 system running Solaris 10 which provides Virginia Tech researchers with access to high performance computing on a Sun Microsystems hardware platform and supports SAS, MATLAB, and R which are not currently available on the VT compute server Inferno.

  • Four 1.5 GHz UltraSparc IV+ CPUs
  • 16 GB memory
  • Two 146 GB fiber-channel drives
  • 1.5 TB external storage shared from Inferno

Discovery

Discovery is a Sun Fire v120 system running Solaris 10 which acts as a license server for MATLAB and ABAQUS to Virginia Tech research community. The system currently contains:

  • a 650 MHz UltraSPARC IIi processor
  • 512 KB of Level 2 cache
  • support for up to 4 GB of memory
  • a 38 GB hard drive.



Visualization Servers

Spectra

VT ARC Stereo Graphics Wall

In early spring of 2007, a Viz3D system was purchased for the Advanced Research Computing Conference Room and Lab located in Room 119 of the Andrews Information Systems Building.  The resolution of this wall-size stereo display is 1440x1050, which provides excellent brightness and image quality for presentations and research. 




Other Virginia Tech Resources
for Advanced Research Computing


The following resources support Advanced Research Computing at Virginia Tech:
  • Networking

    Virginia Tech is a founding member of Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership of the National Lambda Rail

    The Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) serves as a testbed and platform for faculty and students at Virginia Tech and researchers outside the university to carry out research. We have established this web site and list of contacts in order to assist others in conducting and disseminating research related to computer and community networking.

    eCorridors is an economic development and outreach program of Virginia Tech. that is focused on a long-term vision of facilitating the development of next generation network infrastructure and services in collaboration with interested communities in Virginia.

  • Storage (Arrays), Backup, and Archival Capabilities

    • Network-Attached Storage (NAS)

    • Network Backup

  • Research Application Software

  • Data Resources (e.g., from library, Bioinformatics, and other shared sources)

  • Campus Computer Labs

For general information about computing resources available at Virginia Tech, see: 

     http://computing.vt.edu




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