Palmetto Cluster Catapults Clemson to Worldwide Ranking

Last updated on June 18, 2008 10:42 PM

Clemson University has made its first appearance on the list of the top 500 supercomputing sites in the world, debuting at number 62.

The 31st edition of the TOP500 list was released at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany. Since 1993, the list has been produced twice a year and is the most extensive survey of trends and changes in the global supercomputing arena.

"Clemson is on the move in a big way", commented Jim Bottum, Clemson's vice provost and chief information officer. "In a very short period of time, we have moved from outside the top 500 computing sites in the world to solidly within the top 75. That is tremendous progress toward Clemson's goal of becoming a Top 20 public university; but even more important is how this enables and empowers our faculty, students and staff to conduct competitive, engaging and collaborative work in a global environment."

Bottum notes that he was brought to Clemson to build a world-class cyberinfrastructure for education, research and service. However, he maintains that enabling learning and discovery is more than just offering compute cycles; it requires creating a collaborative environment where IT specialists work in partnership with faculty and students to create an advanced cyberinfrastructure that serves the needs of a multi-disciplinary set of programs.

The Palmetto Cluster, for which Clemson received this impressive world ranking, is a perfect example of the collaborative partnerships that are driving Clemson's unprecedented progress. It is also enabling research and other computationally-intense work that simply could not be done prior to the development of this system. According to Jim Pepin, Clemson's chief technology officer, "This ranking recognizes Clemson’s new role as a leader in campus-based high performance computing systems; plus, our academic community is now equipped to compete for and win contracts and grants that were previously out of reach."

Both Bottum and Pepin note that in reviewing the TOP500 list, Clemson is now in the top five among non-federally funded US universities.

Jill Gemmill, Executive Director of CITI, adds this information for users:

"The Palmetto cluster is a faculty/university partnership. Following a 'condominium' model, Clemson researchers may add their own nodes to the cluster, gaining a university match of power, cooling, system administration, and use of additional nodes when available.

The Palmetto cluster is available for use on a university-wide basis to all CU faculty. Student high performance computing allocations are available by faculty request.

For more information about the Palmetto cluster and how to use it, see: http://citi.clemson.edu/palm_intro"

A full story on the development of the Palmetto Cluster was released in May and can be viewed at http://www.clemson.edu/newsroom/articles/2008/may/PalmettoCluster.php5

For information on CCIT visit www.clemson.edu/ccit/. Additional information on the top 500 supercomputing sites can be found at www.top500.org/.