What a Cluster: How A Group of Souped-Up Computers is Accelerating Important Research at Stevens - Stevens Institute
Simulating the impacts of complex problems, such as storm surges that have the potential to destroy vulnerable coastal areas, require serious computing power. A regular desktop PC won’t cut it. But if you combine many smaller computers into a cluster and have them work together, this system becomes powerful enough to generate new insight into basic science questions and engineering applications.
In the basement of the Williams Library on the campus of Stevens Institute of Technology is the school’s first freely accessible high-performance computer cluster working on some of the biggest and most intricate problems, from modeling storm surges to simulating the changes a human brain undergoes as it ages.
Nicknamed Dorothy, in reference to Dorothy Vaughn, an African-American mathematician who pioneered advanced computing efforts at NASA, this high-performance computing cluster has quickly become an essential research tool since it came to campus in late 2018, according to several faculty at the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering & Science. The computing cluster was formed from 80 compute nodes, with a total of 880 cores—which are individual compute units. This is similar to using 220 laptop computers in parallel. So far, about 20 faculty and lab groups on campus (and growing) have accessed the computer to perform research that has important implications in a variety of fields.