Jim Skirvin, president of the Holland Computing Center

One of the largest supercomputers in the world is churning data at the University of

Nebraska. That’s right—Nebraska. The “silicon prairie” is a leading worldwide resource

for academic, government and industry research. By Samuel GreenGard

SOLVING SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST COMplex scientific and business problems isn’t a task for the faint of heart. These days it requires massive amounts of brainpower— and computing power.

So when leaders at the Peter Kiewit Institute (PKI), an information technology and engineering learning center that’s part of the University of Nebraska, Omaha (UNO), decided to build one of the world’s largest computing clusters in 2006, it was about more than dollars—it simply made good sense for the school. The center, they theorized, would receive worldwide attention while providing greater learning opportunities for students.

28 june 2008 // AMD AccelerAte

You can safely say the theory has proven true. The supercomputer, ranked in the top 50 globally and the largest existing Dell/ AMD cluster, is changing the face of education, research and business. It creates new opportunities for businesses, researchers and students to tackle complex problems that exceed the capabilities of a single computer. Gallup and Microsoft® are among the entities contracting to use the 1,151-node facility, which sits in the 2,000-square-foot glass-enclosed Holland Computing Center (HCC) at UNO’s South Campus. “We’re entering a new era in research and creating opportunities that weren’t imaginable only a few years ago,” states Jim Skirvin, presi-

dent of the Holland Computing Center.

The computing cluster combines leading-edge thinking with state-of-the-art technology. Funding for the project—nearly $20 million in cash and in-kind contributions— came from an array of donors, many of whom live in Omaha and/or attended the university. Much of the technical prowess and gear came from AMD, Dell, Cisco Systems, Force10 Networks and American Power Conversion. The cluster uses Dell PowerEdge SC1435 servers with Dual- and Quad-Core AMD Opteron^™ processors. Says Greg Branch, business development manager at AMD, “HCC has established itself as an undisputed leader in high-end computing.”

phOTOgraph: bryce bridges