Penguin Lab’s super computer is officially opened
Take a look at the history of the ‘supercomputer’, you will see that it not just means a ‘very fast computer’, but in fact mostly refers to computers in which multiple state-of-the-art processors run parallel, thus bundling their calculative power. The brand new Penguin Lab at EEMCS offers such a supercomputer – but with a twist: a classroom setting. The 32 computers, spread over the several desks in the lab, all can run parallel. Not just for researchers to speed up their analysis, but just as importantly: to create an environment where students can learn the intricate details of High Performance Computing. This will ready them for working with bigger supercomputers, such as TU Delft’s new DelftBlue.
The brand new Penguin Lab, located on the second floor of Building 36 of the EEMCS faculty, was opened on Monday the 30th of May. During the ceremony, the opening honours where to the EEMCS dean Lucas van der Vliet, who symbolically first put all the computers in synch. He thus created a unique education facility, as was explained subsequently by Wim van Horssen, who elaborated the importance of the Penguin Lab in the education offered at the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics (DIAM). His view emphasised by Martin van Gijzen, who explained how the lab can function as training ground for first getting to grips High Performance Computing. Finally, as the proof is in eating the pudding, a live demonstration of the lab’s capabilities was given by Kees Lemmens. He showed how the students can be stimulated to interact with the teacher, by providing an exercise to calculate the resonance of a drum, and together working on way to derive the fastest computer code for this problem.
