An SGI-supplied LINUX supercomputing cluster, which provides high performance at low cost and takes up comparatively little floor space, has been installed in the Center for Computational Research, the only academic beta-test site for the cluster in the world.

SGI made the announcement yesterday in New York City during LINUXWorld, a trade show dedicated to the operating system.

"The CCR is at the cutting-edge of high-performance computing and we are delighted to be able to augment its existing computing environment with this LINUX cluster solution," said Jan Silverman, vice president for advanced systems marketing at SGI. "The efficiency and power of the cluster is well-suited to meet the wide range of computational challenges being addressed by university researchers."

The SGI LINUX cluster is the center's most powerful machine, packing 150 Gigaflops-150 billion floating operations per second-versus existing supercomputers, which provide about 64 billion.

But for all its power, the cluster, made up of 76 1.75-inch-high processors, each containing 2 Pentium III chips, takes up only about 16 square feet, compared to the 128-processor SGI Origin 2000, which takes up nearly 60 square feet.

According to CCR staff, the small footprint of a well-engineered cluster allows the machines to be stacked easily in a relatively small area, a great benefit to supercomputing centers, research laboratories and companies that require high-end computing but are pressed for space.

"This is a rack 'em, stack 'em supercomputer," said Russ Miller, CCR director and professor of computer science and engineering. "It's one-third the size of some of our other supercomputers and three times as powerful."

The cost-effectiveness of a cluster lies in the fact that its component parts, typically commodity processors from companies like Intel and AMD, are relatively inexpensive due to the large penetration in the marketplace, Miller said.

"The price of supercomputing is tumbling," said Miller. "And we believe that the SGI LINUX cluster is at the forefront of cost-effective supercomputing."

Staff at the UB center put the cluster together for approximately one-fifth of the cost of some of the center's other supercomputers.

According to Miller, the SGI LINUX cluster was up and running at CCR within days of its installation, solving important problems in computational chemistry, biology and crystallography.

The LINUX operating system, created by Linus Torvalds and developed with assistance from programmers around the world, is free, portable and easy-to-use, explained Matt Jones, CCR computational scientist.

"It allows us to build powerful computing clusters from inexpensive, commodity, off-the-shelf components that can rival the most powerful single servers available today," Jones said.