SE 765 - Distributed Software Development

CS 610 - Introduction to Parallel and Distributed Computing

Assignment #1

In September 2010, Pace received a donated high performance computer cluster from Blue Sky Studios. It is comprised of 54 blade servers (39 active), each with dual AMD 2.4 GHz Opteron single-core processors that are over 8 years old, 12 GB of RAM, and 72 GB of disk space. The hardware resides in a secured, climate controlled environment in the University’s server farm. This is ancient technology by contemporary computing standards and is in need of immediate upgrading.

Pace University has budgeted $50,000 to purchase outright and or construct a replacement for this system that employs state-of-the-art technology and will be expandable and maintainable for the next five years. It is your group’s responsibility to come up with a proposal for the acquisition of such a system assuming that it will be used for research in scientific computing.

You are to do the following:

· Design the system

· Price out it parts or vendors

· Estimate its expected speed and performance based on sample applications and test suites

· Justify your design against others.

· Prepare a 2-4 page written report and class presentation.

· You may work in a group of 1 to 3 people.

Due Date : 9/22/2014