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Last Updated: Aug 9th, 2007 - 13:22:15 |
High-performance
computing -- solving problems using clusters of interconnected supercomputers -- is having profound impacts on science, engineering and industry and is quickly becoming the leading technology
of the 21st century. As businesses use supercomputing for applications like data warehousing, transaction processing and business intelligence, knowledge of
supercomputing is becoming a critical advantage in today’s workplace.
However, many students who want to learn about high-performance computing do not have the opportunity to do so because their colleges and universities do not offer classes in the field. College-level courses on HPC are scarce both because the technology is just
emerging and because there is not
always a qualified professor to teach the course.
A Louisiana State University computer science professor, Thomas Sterling,
hopes to make instruction about HPC more readily available through his new course,
“High-Performance Computing: Concepts, Methods and Means,” which makes use of Internet-based video technologies provided by the university's Center
for Computation and Technology, or CCT.
Sterling’s course, the only one of its kind in the
country, marks the first use of high-definition video broadcast via the
Internet for distributed classroom instruction. As well as being offered at LSU, the course is being exported to schools internationally.
“Every student should have a chance,” Sterling said, explaining the
creation of his course. “It is unfair to me that students would be
deprived of the opportunity to learn simply because their universities
do not offer a course in a particular subject.”
The idea for using this technology for the class
grew out of a research project on the use of optical networks done in
collaboration with colleagues Micro Electronics Center of North
Carolina and Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.
CCT Director Ed Seidel supports the course as a way to bring the
technology of high-performance computing to more people who can go on
to use that technology in the workplace.
“It is amazing to see a research project lead to such an important
application in practice in just a year,” Seidel said. “It is a good
example of the immense payoff of research and the state’s investments
in the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative and other information
technology programs for things we do in everyday life – in this case,
education.”
The technology component is made possible at LSU through the Louisiana
Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, a high-speed, fiber optics network
that links supercomputers at major research sites throughout Louisiana.
LONI brings the state onto the National LambdaRail, a high-speed network that links research
facilities around the country. Through such networks, the boundaries
between universities can be blurred, and students at one institution
can access educational instruction from another without transferring.
“Louisiana will, in a very short time, be one of the most connected
places in the country,” Sterling said. “Since the technology is in
place, we can use it for classroom instruction to get more young people
involved in this field.”
Sterling, an internationally recognized supercomputing expert who was
with NASA prior to joining CCT, has worked on numerous international computing projects.
Sterling is also the father of Beowulf class clusters, developed with
colleague Donald Becker, which today are a common building block of the
world’s supercomputers.
“With this class, Louisiana and LSU are starting the process of moving
out of the conventional classroom and are creating different approaches
to academics,” Sterling said.
For the “alpha run” of the course, which began on
Jan. 16, it is being offered to students at Louisiana Tech University,
the University of Arkansas, Micro Electronics Center of North Carolina
and Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. Sterling explained that
these sites were selected for the first run of the course because each
has access to a high-speed network connection for ease in streaming the
course, and also because there is a high-performance computing expert
at each of those universities who can assist with the trial run as
necessary.
“As a small country, we could not afford the biggest supercomputers,
but the knowledge of supercomputing technology gives our graduates, who
often work abroad, a competitive advantage,” said Ludek Matyska from
Masaryk University. “For a long time, we worked together with CCT in
the area of high-definition video transmission over the high-speed
network, so we decided to use our expertise in this field to promote
supercomputing at Masaryk University, too. Using the new technology,
students everywhere can take advantage of resources of other schools
and are no longer limited to their home university’s curriculum. On the
other hand, each university can deepen its particular expertise without
endangering the overall quality and broad coverage of its education.”
Plans are already in the works to send the course to even more
universities and research institutions in the Spring 2008 semester.
Sterling has received interest from many more schools in the U.S. and
worldwide to participate in the Spring 2008 semester course
presentation.
The course is designed to offer an interdisciplinary look
at the high-performance computing field. Students should leave the class prepared to pursue
professional goals like building supercomputers,
developing new software for them or working in a business that could
benefit from high-performance computing resources.
Sterling is creating a DVD
series of his lectures that will include subtitles for the
hearing-impaired and will be dubbed in other languages including Spanish, Japanese and Thai. The course is also available
in standard definition for those institutions not yet
ready for high-definition streaming.
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