Bowie State University

Small School Makes Big Statement with Xserve Cluster

By Frank Lacombe

A student tries out Xseed, Bowie State's Xserve-based supercomputer.

Bowie State University recently unveiled Xseed, a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster comprising 224 dual-processor Xserve G5 servers. In June 2005, Xseed was ranked 166th in the TOP500 listing of the world’s fastest computers, placing Bowie State in the top 25 universities worldwide and the top 15 in the United States in computational capacity.

Remarkably, Xseed was built over the course of just a few months by a dozen — mostly undergraduate — students, under the supervision of a single computer science professor, at a cost of only $1 million. Bowie State’s achievement is all the more remarkable because the school is very small, having an enrollment of only 4,000 undergraduate and 1,500 graduate students.

“The Bowie State campus is only 20 miles from Washington, D.C., which is home to a lot of important government agencies, businesses and institutions,” says Bowie State University president Dr. Calvin W. Lowe. “We expect our Apple Xserve cluster supercomputer to make Bowie State an attractive technology partner, providing opportunities for students and faculty from a broad range of disciplines to collaborate on cutting-edge projects.”

“It’s easy to see how a supercomputer benefits the computer science, engineering and mathematics departments,” says Dr. Diane Krichmar, special assistant to the president, who works on university initiatives related to education and technology. “But we want students in the arts, social sciences, health sciences and other disciplines to benefit just as much from having a resource like this on campus. That’s why we need a system that has all the features our math, engineering and science students need, and at the same time is easy to use for students who may have no prior computer experience. Mac OS X manages to accommodate all experience levels seamlessly.”

“We expect our Apple Xserve cluster supercomputer to make Bowie State an attractive technology partner, providing opportunities for students and faculty from a broad range of disciplines to collaborate on cutting-edge projects.”

The physical location of the computer on campus symbolizes Bowie State’s commitment to making Xseed a resource for the whole university. Not hidden away in the inner sanctum of the computer science facility, the racks of dual-processor Xserve G5s are located in full view at the very center of the campus, behind floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the Center for Technology and Learning.

The First of Five Strategic Initiatives

Soon after Dr. Lowe became president of the university, he announced five strategic initiatives to be implemented within a five-year period. The supercomputer initiative would be the first, since it would provide infrastructure elements required by the others. Although the university had previously developed a strategic plan for information technology that placed heavy emphasis on helping students to bridge the digital divide, Dr. Lowe believed that a much more aggressive computing initiative was needed.

Having a supercomputer on campus would provide, he believed, many opportunities for collaboration with outside organizations, offering a richer educational experience for students and potentially even generating revenue for the school. At first, the supercomputer itself would probably be the primary motivation to choose Bowie State as a technology partner, but over time, he hoped that the university would develop a reputation as a center for technology and research in a number of fields.

Within the university itself, Dr. Lowe believed that a supercomputing facility would encourage new areas of interdisciplinary study, stimulate new developments in pedagogy and facilitate distance learning through streaming media and other technologies. Students would have more powerful tools for creating multimedia, graphics, fine arts, video and software. Researchers in every field would have powerful new analytical tools at their disposal.

“In order to make progress, we have to think strategically,” observes Dr. Lowe. “We have limited funds and we need to leverage them for maximum effect. There are countless worthy ways in which a university can invest its budget dollars. But when we explored our options, we could not think of any alternative investment that would contribute more to the school’s standing in the community, facilitate more research in all academic fields and open more doors for collaboration than a supercomputing facility.”

1 2 Next Page >