Dell Supercomputing Clusters Help Oxford University Unravel Mystery of the Universe; Solution Helps Oxford University Perform Faster, More Efficient Scientific Research.Business Editors/Education Writers/High-Tech Writers ROUND ROCK, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 11, 2003 Oxford University's world-renowned physics department will implement a Dell (Nasdaq:DELL) high-performance computing High-speed computing, which typically refers to supercomputers used in scientific research. cluster (HPCC HPCC - High Performance Computing and Communications ) solution to conduct research that will assist in a project aimed to unravel the secrets of the universe. The cluster of Dell PowerEdge This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. (tm) servers will analyze and store data used to investigate mass, inertia and antimatter antimatter: see antiparticle. antimatter Substance composed of elementary particles having the mass and electric charge of ordinary matter (such as electrons and protons) but for which the charge and related magnetic properties are opposite in sign. , thereby helping to understand the behavior and effects of elementary particles on the universe. The Dell HPCC solution at Oxford University will provide computing power and data storage to a larger study being jointly conducted at Oxford, Liverpool, UCL UCL University College London UCL Université Catholique de Louvain UCL UEFA Champions League UCL Upper Confidence Limit UCL University of Central Lancashire UCL Upper Control Limit UCL Unfair Competition Law UCL Ulnar Collateral Ligament and Glasgow universities. It will combine the particles research with proton research and analysis from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), physical science research center located near Batavia, Ill., est. 1968 as the National Accelerator Laboratory, renamed 1974 in honor of Enrico Fermi. It was built on the site of the former village of Weston. (Fermilab) in Illinois, USA. Project leader at Oxford, Dr Todd Huffman decided to install clustering technology in 2002 when the Consortium(a) received GBP GBP In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the British Pound. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. 340,000 additional funding. He commented, "The Dell solution will help us to simplify the enormous task we have ahead of us by providing the power of a traditional proprietary supercomputer but at a fraction of the implementation and management cost." Better Scalability, Processing Power and Flexibility The project needed to update its computing platform See platform. with a solution that provided maximum performance and flexibility with the greatest achievable cost savings. "The Dell solution gives us the option to expand and upgrade our infrastructure by adding new processors and storage devices year-by-year when our existing hardware is at capacity," says Huffman. "Dell also presented the best overall package, offering up to 30 percent more processing power than its competitors for the same cost, which meant we could implement the solution while keeping within the budget." Martin Boyce, general manager, Dell Enterprise Business Systems, explains, "Many of the world's leading organizations, universities and research institutions are realizing the value and performance benefits of standards-based technology for applications previously conducted on expensive proprietary systems. HPCC is an ideal solution for the Oxford University project, as it has the processing power to churn and analyze large amounts of data at much better value than closed-architecture supercomputers." About the Oxford Cluster The cluster is running Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux, assembled by Red Hat, was a popular, "middle-aged" Linux distribution (not as old as Slackware but older than Ubuntu) upon its discontinuation in 2004.[1] Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994. on 10 2650 PowerEdge servers, 16 PowerVault 220s RAID storage enclosures providing 7TB of useable RAID storage. In addition, a Gigabit Ethernet network and Scali Universe XE cluster management software were installed. Support was also an important factor for Oxford so a three-year support contract with Scali, one of Dell's leading clustering technology partners, was put in place. This guaranteed support enables the team to focus on its research, and not on maintaining the clustered computing infrastructure. Dell's relationship with Scali was another contributing factor in the decision to go with Dell because of the company's reputation in the industry. About Dell Dell Computer Corporation (company) Dell Computer Corporation - One of the biggest US manufacturers of IBM PC compatibles. "From notebooks to networks", their slogan says. http://us.dell.com. (Nasdaq:DELL) is a premier provider of products and services required for customers worldwide to build their information-technology and Internet infrastructures. Company revenue for the past year totaled $35.4 billion. Dell, through its direct business model, designs, manufactures and customizes products and services to customer requirements, and offers an extensive selection of software and peripherals. Information on Dell and its products can be obtained at www.dell.com. Dell, PowerEdge and PowerVault are trademarks of Dell Computer Corporation. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. (a) Oxford is the lead institution in a consortium of four Universities, including Liverpool, UCL (University College London “UCL” redirects here. For other uses, see UCL (disambiguation). University College London, commonly known as UCL, is the oldest multi-faculty constituent college of the University of London, one of the two original founding colleges, and the first British ) and Glasgow. Dell has sold four separate clusters, one for each site. Each site has an identical cluster, and accesses data from FermiLab in the United States to carry out their research. |
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