LSU OFFERS SUPERMIKE-II TO VISUAL EFFECTS COMPANIES ouisiana State University now offers a render farm capability to visual effects companies using LSU’s SuperMike-II high performance computing system.
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Operational since February 2013, SuperMike-II represents the third generation of supercomputers deployed at LSU. Built by Dell, Inc., the $2.6-million system features a total of 440 compute nodes (servers), each of which has 2 Intel Sandy Bridge 8-core processors running at 2.6GHz. Its theoretical peak performance capability is 212 TeraFlops, or 212 thousandbillion floating point operations per second. Until recently, SuperMike-II has been mainly used to enable a broad range of research at LSU, from the development of computational frameworks and advanced computational execution models, to computational modeling in coastal studies, fluid dynamics, biology,
SuperMike - II - an up-close look.
chemistry, oceanography, astrophysics, materials, and petroleum engineering. SuperMike-II has brought two novel capabilities to LSU’s researchers: graphical processing unit (GPU) accelerators and large-memory symmetric multiprocessing. “LSU is committed to using our supercomputing capabilities and technologies not only for cutting-edge research and education, but also to foster economic development in Louisiana,” said Joel Tohline, director of LSU Center for Computation & Technology.
“This is why we invite visual effects companies to use SuperMike-II’s render farm capabilities.” LFV For more information, visit www.cct.lsu.edu.
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LOUISIANA FILM & VIDEO MAGAZINE
ISSUE FOUR 2013