New UP supercomputer to be used for virtual modeling

By Alexander Villafania, INQ7.net

The new supercomputer at the University of the Philippines Diliman Computational Science Research Center (UP-CSRC) is being opened for various virtual modeling for scientific research including biology, bioinformatics, traffic management and even economics.

The supercomputer is actually a cluster of Pentium IV and Xeon-based computers that have a combined processing speed of 30 Gigaflops.

The CSRC received a 4.8-million-peso grant from the Philippine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology.

CSRC Director Vincent Ricardo Daria said the supercomputer would primarily be used for CSRC student researches. However, they have already lined up projects with the National Institute of Geological Sciences and the UP Marine Science Institute.

“The supercomputer opens up a venue for interdisciplinary studies. Local research centers that need very large computations only need to approach the CSRC to meet their needs,’ Daria said.

Daria said they are using open source platforms on the supercomputer. Currently, they are using Linux, Java and Openmosix clustering software.

Daria said they could also open a network connecting the supercomputer to other computing facilities in UP and in other agencies for grid computing researches.

“Those are still plans but our initial goal is to make research easier for students and other scientists. It once took several days to come up with a model of a research but with this type of computing power, we can now view results from virtual models in a few hours,” Daria said.