By Donna Kettenbach
March 23, 2001
The University's new supercomputer at the new Parallel Supercomputing Center benefits students and faculty throughout campus as a major tool for scientific research. But the University also has an opportunity to establish a new interdisciplinary computational science education and training program based on the center and its supercomputer.
Last month, Edward S. Macias, executive vice chancellor and dean of Arts & Sciences, gathered together faculty members interested in computational science to discuss the program.
 Malcolm Tobias (left), Ph.D., administrator of the new Parallel Super-computing Center, and Wai-Mo Suen, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and principal investigator at the supercomputing center, with Origin 2000, part of the University's supercomputer.
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"Building such a computational science program will, by necessity, cut across schools, departments and disciplines and benefit both undergraduate and graduate students," said Wai-Mo Suen, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences. "It will have both immediate and long-term impact."
He foresees students graduating from the University with a doctorate in computational biology or computational physics, for example, to become leaders and pioneers in many fields.
"This is something I've been advocating for some time," Gruia-Catalin Roman said of the possible new program. He chairs the Department of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. "This is an extraordinary opportunity for the University --investments in computational science will position our academic research at the forefront of modern science. It touches several key disciplines while taking full advantage of recent advances in computer science and courses already in place today. As computer scientists, we often have the greatest impact on society when interacting with other disciplines."
"The power of computing is exploding," Suen continued. "Applications of high-performance computing are developing in many disciplines. These, coupled with the drop in price of high-performance computing based on parallel technologies, are powering a phase transition, just like cheap personal computers are powering the information age. We are witnessing the coming of the age of high-performance computing."
Students and faculty can study subjects from black holes, to the Earth's mantle, to gene models, to analyzing data, to testing algorithms and visualizing enormous data sets in the University's new supercomputing center, Suen said.
"To make use of the computing power that our computer scientists have built and will build, it is important that we train a new generation of computational scientists in the new paradigm of high performance computing," Suen said.
"This is what I've been dreaming of," said Malcolm Tobias, Ph.D., the administrator of the supercomputing center. "It's about training people in different fields --like a biologist trained with a strong computational background, not just about training computer scientists. This should be a University-wide initiative, and we should take a long-term approach."
Roman agrees. "We have to do it right and root such a program in computer science fundamentals, because technology today changes too fast," Roman said. He views each potential degree program as "a scientific pursuit (e.g., physics, chemistry or biology) enhanced by a strong reliance on intellectual and technical skills offered by computer science research and education."
Suen sees faculty and students trained in parallel computing in different disciplines --science, engineering, business, medicine, etc. --sharing the center's common resources. Its initial benefit is to the University community, but it will serve as a resource to the entire St. Louis research and education community, he said.
Technology is improving faster than people are presently being trained, Suen continued, giving the University an opportunity to train the next generation of computational scientists to fill in this gap.
The supercomputer at the center is a massively parallel computer that simultaneously harnesses the power and production of many computer processors to process information and graphics at rapid speed. It is supported by a three-year, $1.8 million grant the University received from the National Science Foundation and matching funds from Arts & Sciences.
Next month, the supercomputer will move into the former power plant on the campus's north side.
Even in its first phase, the SGI Origin 2000, having four racks with 16 central processing units (CPU) each, has already outgrown its present home in Compton Hall. The second phase will bring to the center a 128 CPU SGI Origin 3000. This next-generation machine based on the latest Intel chip with IA64 technology, scheduled to be delivered later this year, will bring computing power more than 10 times that of the Origin 2000.
When the supercomputer is finished, the University will be among the top 15 academic computing powers in the United States, said Clifford M. Will, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Physics in Arts & Sciences and chair of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
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