Purdue Information Technology Division Employs Grid Computing To Expand Computer Resources

Austin, TX, June 25, 2003 — United Devices, the market leader in secure grid solutions, today announced that it is in the process of linking 2,300 computers at Purdue University to create a computational grid to perform research that previously was performed on supercomputers.

"Our instructional labs close at 1:00 a.m. and reopen at 7:00 a.m. During those six hours, 2,300 machines sat idle," said David Moffett, associate vice president of research computing services for Information Technology at Purdue University. "The compute cycles existed, but no one was using them in the dark of night. With United Devices, we were able to create a grid to use those cycles, maintain throughput, and clear our supercomputers for tasks that they're much more qualified to perform."

The United Devices Grid MP™ platform allows the University to triple the power of its core resources without having to invest in additional hardware. ITaP (Information Technology at Purdue) is using the massive computational power to perform 8,000 to 10,000 genomics and proteomics sequencing runs a day, a volume previously unobtainable without relying on their supercomputing resources.

"Purdue is ahead of the curve in taking steps to use grid computing to supplement its resources. In fact, this move triples their available power and frees up existing resources for other uses," said United Devices' CEO, Ed Hubbard. "This is a clear win for United Device in a very competitive university market where free-ware solutions just aren't able to scale up in real production environments."

Grid MP™ Enterprise from United Devices is the leading grid solution for on-site institutional deployments. By collectively harnessing the latent power of existing clusters, servers, desktops, and workstations, organizations maximize the value of resources they already own while gaining compute power to accelerate and refine their research and analysis. The software aggregates heterogeneous resources into a virtual processing network capable of increasing processing power (and decreasing processing time) exponentially.

According to representatives at ITaP, there are several possibilities in further utilizing the grid, including sharing CPU cycles with local industry partners in the genomics industry as well as borrowing compute cycles from University affiliates who aren't using them during the evening. "We're trying to utilize all of the resources available," said Moffett. "In this case, the CPU cycles were available, but we had yet to effectively use them."

About United Devices