Newsletter No. 117

CUHK Newsletter No. 117 4th December 1997 3 Mainland & Thailand Nursing Students Visit CUHK M aster o f Nursin g student s fro m Xia n Medical Universit y an d Chian g Ma i visited the Departmen t o f Nursing from 3r d to 7th November as part of their course. While in Hong kong they took part in seminars with Master of Nursing students of the Department of Nursing an d exchanged idea s wit h nurs e managers from a variety of healthcare settings in Hong Kong. CUHK Graduates Top HK S A / ACCA Exams Two mor e graduates o f the University cam e out tops in the June 1997 HKSA/ACCA joint examinations administere d b y th e Hon g Kon g Society o f Accountants . 199 6 accountanc y graduate Mr . Won g Kin-lap wa s the top score r in paper 10(H) 'Accounting and Audit Practice', and 199 5 economics graduat e Ms. Lorraine N g Lai-kwan wa s th e to p score r i n pape r 1 2 'Management an d Strategy'. Origin2000 A New Supercomputer for Computation-intensive Research Through the joint effort s of the Computer Service s Centr e (CSC) an d th e Institut e o f Mathematical Science s (IMS) , the Universit y ha s procure d a supercomputer whic h i s no w housed in and administered b y the CSC . Th e SG I (Silico n Graphics, Inc.)-made system — 0rigin2000 — is available for all research staf f of the Universit y with project s tha t requir e hig h computational power . I t wa s officially launche d o n 13t h November a t the CS C b y pro-vice - chancellor Prof . Kenneth Young. How Powerful Is It? 0rigin2000 syste m is the fastest supercomputer i n Hong Kong. I t has 24 CPUs with a total theoretical peak computational power of 9.36 x 10 9 floatingpoint operations per second, which is about the same as 100 personal computers with Inte l Pentium 200 CPUs . 0rigin2000 ha s about 200 GB o f disk storage and 6.5 GB of main memory, equivalent to about 200 personal computers, each with 32 M RAM . Th e system was ranked 426th i n the World-wid e To p 50 0 Supercomputer Lis t which came out in June 1997 . How I t Was Selected 0rigin2000 wa s procured through a tendering exercise . One of the most difficult tasks was the evaluation of the best system. Supercomputer technology at the time of the tendering exercise had just undergone a dramatic change in hardware architecture and many new systems were available almost at the same time. A ll manufacturers claimed that their products were the most powerful i n performance and the most innovative in design. Our projec t team evaluate d eac h proposal ver y carefull y wit h objectiv e benchmarking tools . Our target was systems that could be used with minima l effort by first-time users of a supercomputer, but that at the same time met the requirements of experienced supercomputer users who look for computationa l power more than user-friendliness. Therefore, in the evaluation exercise, criteria other than performance and price were taken into consideration. These included the availability o f third-party commercia l packages, ease-of-use for first-time users, availability o f tools for experienced users, provision of 64-bit memor y space addressing, expandability, and upgradeability. The result was our selection of Origin2000 . Who Wi ll Find the Most Use There are numerous research areas in which a high-performance computer or supercomputer i s often needed. Examples are fluid mechanics, simulation , turbulence, multi-dimension data visualization, multi-dimension data analysis, computational statistics , computationa l chemistry , quantu m chemistry , optimization, and data-mining. Research project s tha t requir e computationa l powe r o r memor y tha t departmental computers or the medium-sized servers at the CSC cannot provide will hav e access to 0rigin2000. Priorit y wil l b e given to projects that have a clear schedule, well-defined objectives, and workable methodologies . Project and System Support 0rigin2000 ha s been installe d wit h supportin g hardwar e an d software , including high-performanc e compilers , paralle l tools , an d many third-part y commercial software packages such as IMSL FORTRAN 90 MP Library, pghpf high-performance FORTRAN , Gaussian94 , Matlab , an d Fluen t t o suppor t research projects in the areas mentioned. System an d use r support for Origin2000 are provide d b y the High-performanc e Computing Suppor t Team o f CSC . Th e team is responsible fo r providing informatio n on th e us e o f th e system, approva l o f account applications , and the allocatio n an d scheduling of resources for approved projects. From left: Mr. Steven Lau of SGI, Mr. Thomas Tsui of CSC, Mr. Vincent Lee of SGI, director of CSC Dr. Stanislaus Hu, and pro-vice-chancellor Prof. Kenneth Young. The members of the team are : David Choi david-choi@cuhk.edu.h k ext . 8855 Frank Ng frank-ng@cuhk.edu.h k ext . 8826 George Yuen georgeyuen@cuhk.edu.h k ext . 8879 Jim Law jim-law@cuhk.edu.h k ext . 8906 Philip Ling philipling@cuhk.edu.h k ext . 8875 S.T. Wong st-wong@cuhk.edu.h k ext . 8874 Thomas Tsu i tomtsui@cuhk.edu.h k ext . 8844 The team will work very closely with project leaders and their collaborators in orde r t o us e the resource s o f th e supercompute r efficiently . Apar t from meetings wit h tea m members , user s ca n obtai n suppor t throug h a n emai l consultation servic e at hpc-help@cuhk.edu.hk. Mor e comprehensiv e an d up- to-date informatio n abou t the new supercompute r syste m i s available o n the web at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/csc/compenv/hpc/ . Thomas Tsui Computer Services Centre