NCSI Mini-Grant Application - BCCD Enhancements

Last updated : Wednesday, October 27, 2004 at 17:45:31  EST

Overview

The Bootable Cluster CD (BCCD) project has proven its value as a teaching and research tool in a variety of settings. One limitation of the BCCD is that it is only available for the x86 hardware architecture. While x86 machines make-up the bulk of the computers in use today there is a significant presence of PowerPC hardware, particularly in educational facilities. We propose to extend the reach of the BCCD by porting it to the PowerPC architecture. Our budget request from NCSI for this project is $3,000.

Details

Our work on this project can be broken down into four principle components:

1. Port the software, document the porting process, document the new build process.
2. Setup the plumbing to automate the process of keeping the x86 (base) codeline and the new PowerPC port in-sync.
3. Use the documentation as the basis of a poster/paper. There are a number of venues for which this would be appropriate.
4. Develop a second poster/paper on using the BCCD to teach message passing based parallel programming. There are a number of venues for which this would be appropriate.

Paul Gray has successfully completed a basic feasibility test of porting the BCCD to the PowerPC platform.

Outcomes

Extends the scope and scale of NCSI activities.

Provides an opportunity to disseminate to likely BCCD adopters at conferences related to computational science.

Personnel

Paul Gray - Associate Professor of Computer Science, http://www.cs.uni.edu/~gray

Charlie Peck - Earlham College, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, http://cluster.earlham.edu

Tobias McNulty - Earlham College, Student, http://cs.earlham.edu/~tmcnulty

Budget

Tobias McNulty (or another student) - $10/hour, 10 hours/week for 30 weeks = $3,000

Hardware - Earlham College has donated 4 PowerPC/G4 based Macintoshs to the project.

Total grant request = $3,000