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A SUPER RESOURCE FOR BUSINESS
UB'S SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER EXCELS AT PRODUCT VISUALIZATION
Published on May 20, 1999
Author: FRED O. WILLIAMS
© The Buffalo News Inc.
Imagine walking through a building not yet built, or flying a helicopter around a bridge that's still on the drawing board.
The University at Buffalo's new supercomputer center, which has completed its installation at UB's North Campus, will allow local companies to conduct such visualization exercises and other computation-intensive research, university officials said. "In Buffalo we have a whole history of building the wrong things," said Thomas Furlani, associate director for UB's Center for Computational Research. "Visualization lets you see what its like to drive over the bridge -- at night or in the rain." The supercomputer center held an event Wednesday for companies to understand how its resources can be tapped for commercial research and design projects. The center's computers,which have been running for several months, were recently relocated from temporary space to a permanent glass-enclosed home in Norton Hall at UB's Amherst campus. Announced in January, the $7 million center boasts a total processing power of 60 billion operations per second. That's roughly the equivalent of hundreds of high-end Pentium computers, all able to focus on a single task. The equipment, the chief components of which are from Silicon Graphics Inc. and IBM Corp., puts UB among the top 10 university computing sites in the nation, UB officials said. "What we'd like is to partner with some companies in Western New York -- there are a number of ways we can do that," said Russ Miller, director of the center and UB professor of computer science and engineering. Companies might form joint research projects with UB faculty or buy time at the supercomputer center directly, he said. Costs are $75 an hour per processor, with discounts for routines that are designed to run quickly on multiple processors. Wilson Greatbatch Ltd. in Clarence might use the center's resources to model components of its pacemaker batteries, said William Clark, director of information technology and systems. "Maybe the expertise that's available here is the thing -- I think it's a wonderful resource," he said. Consultants at the center will help users get their programs up and running. In about two weeks, visualization equipment will let users make virtual tours of computer-generated environments. The Pyramid Systems "ImmersaDesk," equipped with a 4-by-5-foot screen and powered by a Silicon Graphics workstation, allows users to simulate environments and virtually rearrange them on the spot. For example, an industrial designer watching a virtual factory perform a week's production in 30 minutes could spot and correct bottlenecks by rearranging machines. Engineers can conduct what's called "computational steering" with the robust virtual reality equipment, Furlani said. For example, an auto designer can manipulate the shape of a car fender for aesthetic appeal. The computer, tracking the changes in the dimensions of the product, provides immediate feedback about how the new shape will affect the part's crashworthiness and aerodynamics, he said. "The researcher immerses himself in the calculation," Furlani said. Time available on the system shouldn't become constrained for about a year, he said, as academic and corporate researchers are still adapting their projects to make use of the computer. "I can come in here and in one hour do what takes me two or three weeks to do (elsewhere)," said Benjamin Porcari, president of the Buffalo computer animation company Innovative Business Communications. Porcari's company -- the computer center's first corporate partner -- is able to help other companies build virtual, computer-based designs to run on the center's equipment, he said. UB scientists are finding a growing number of uses for the supercomputer, which is becoming an increasingly in-demand tool as computer modeling is applied to more subjects. Abani K. Patra in the department of mechanical engineering is modeling dental implants -- essentially, permanent false teeth. His model subjects different implants to millions of simulated bites, to determine which shapes hold up best. Even after winning scarce supercomputer time from the National Science Foundation for the project, using off-site computers was difficult, he said. For example, graduate students had to be up before dawn to take advantage of available time at a San Diego computer, he said, and were required to wait for massive downloads of results to trickle through a busy cross-country network. "The machine on campus is going to give us quick turnaround time," he said.HARRY SCULL JR./Buffalo NewsRuss Miller, director of the UB supercomputer center, posing with some of the new processor units.
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