University
of Chile and University of Buenos Aires Round Out Gelato's Latin
American Membership
Released on
= May 9, 2005, 2:13 pm
Press Release
Author = Nan Holda
Industry =
Press Release
Summary = Universidad de Chile and Universidad de Buenos Aires recently
became two of the newest members of the Gelato Federation
(http://www.gelato.org), an international organization composed
of leading universities, supercomputing centers, national labs,
and research institutes,
dedicated to advancing Linux on the Intel® Itanium® processor.
Press Release
Body = CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (May 5, 2005)—In the last two weeks,
Universidad de Chile and Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) became
two of the newest
members of the Gelato Federation (http://www.gelato.org), an international
organization composed of leading universities, supercomputing centers,
national labs, and research institutes, dedicated to advancing Linux
on the Intel® Itanium® processor. Also announced at a visit
to UBA on April 18 and a press conference held at Universidad de
Chile on April 21 were donations by HP, Gelato’s founding
sponsor, of HP Integrity servers to both universities.
"We're
delighted to expand the Gelato Latin American family and look forward
to dynamic partnerships promoting research on the Linux Itanium
platform," stated Lueny Morell, Director for University Relations
in Latin America at HP.
Participants at Universidad de Chile’s press conference included
Bess Stephens, Vice President for Corporate Philanthropy and Education
at HP; Lueny Morell, Doctor
Patricio Poblete, Director of the Engineering and Science College;
Doctor Dalia Finkelstein, Vice-Director for Management and External
Projects at the Center for
Mathematical Modeling, as well as other University and HP officials.
During HP’s
visit to UBA on April 18, UBA Dean of Exact Sciences Doctor Pablo
Jacovkis confirmed that “this distinction places UBA on a
par with top universities
and world-renowned research groups, besides playing a key role in
developing cutting-edge research in computing technology.”
Gelato is composed
of 49 member institutions—to which Universidad de Chile and
UBA are the most recent additions from Latin America—for a
total of five institutions from the region, including: the Pontifical
Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul and the Universidade Federal
da Campina Grande, both from Brazil, and the Instituto Tecnologico
de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico. With members from almost
every continent on the globe, the work of the Federation centers
around seven main focus areas: compilers, parallel file systems,
performance, scalability, cluster and grid computing, Linux Itanium
Standards, and Linux Itanium tool integration. Within these areas,
Gelato members are applying new technology and solutions to specific
applications in bioinformatics, high-energy physics, and atmospheric
sciences just
to name a few. Research results are published to the entire community
through Gelato’s website, http://www.gelato.org.
Both Universidad
de Chile and UBA were invited to participate in Gelato as sponsored
members by HP. The universities will contribute to the community
through research in software and applications for Linux on Itanium.
The teams at both institutions will undertake research projects
with doctoral- and masters-level students in computer science, as
well as with external collaborators.
At Universidad
de Chile, Gelato-related activities will take place under the auspices
of the Center for Mathematical Modeling (Centro de Modelamiento
Matemático - CMM), under the direction of Doctor Alejandro
Jofré, Vice Director of the CMM and
Professor in the Computer Science Department. “The focus of
our work will be to port certain computing-intensive applications
to the Linux Itanium platform,” explained Doctor Jofré,
who emphasized that this recent computing platform is defining a
new generation of high-performance computing.
At UBA, Gelato-related
activities will be under the direction of Doctor Hugo Scolnik, Professor
in the Computer Science Department, who noted that his team has
already undertaken a comparative study of different microprocessors
versus the Itanium chip; this work has proved to be of tremendous
value to HP Labs researchers.
HP Donation
to Universidad de Chile
In addition
to the membership announcement, Universidad de Chile also acknowledged
receipt of an Itanium server cluster donation from HP of HP Integrity
rx1620 and rx2620 servers valued at more than US $130,000 given
in support of Universidad de Chile's Gelato-related work. The donation
is part of HP’s overall commitment to education and research
and was donated in close collaboration with HP Chile.
HP’s donation
will augment a larger Itanium computing cluster that the University
has acquired. Itanium is a series of high-performance, 64-bit microprocessors
developed by Intel and HP. HP Integrity servers can handle more
demanding workloads than 32-bit processors. This cluster is the
first of its kind in Chile, offering new areas for investigation
to the University’s researchers.
Doctor Alejandro
Jofré, coordinator of Universidad de Chile’s grid computing
project, noted that “this cluster will provide a means for
us to solve complex modeling problems in the areas of transportation,
environmental studies, genomics, energy and telecommunications,
among others.” This work is also relevant to numerous
other areas, and will be shared with the worldwide scientific community.
Doctor Jofré also explained that he hopes HP’s donation
“will be the beginning of a strong
collaborative relationship with HP, which will hopefully grow over
time through joint research projects in areas that are central to
Chile’s development.”
HP Donation
to UBA
In March 2004,
UBA received an Itanium server cluster donation of HP Integrity
rx2600 servers, valued at more than US $51,500, from HP’s
University Relations
division, with the support of HP Argentina, given to advance the
Gelato-related projects UBA will carry out as a member of Gelato.
"Besides
the already-completed processor comparison study, UBA has already
begun development and parallel implementation of new algorithms
for reconstruction of
tomographic images," explained Doctor Scolnik.
About Gelato
The Gelato Federation
is the global research community dedicated to advancing the Linux
Itanium platform through collaborative relationships targeting real-world
problems and solutions. Gelato members are suppliers and users of
Linux Itanium technology with a shared goal of producing open-source
solutions for academic,
government, and industrial HPC research. The Gelato portal (http://www.gelato.org)
serves as the primary channel for Federation business and collaborations.
Information about Gelato members' software and solutions are available
through the portal, and the community is welcome to participate
and contribute.
For more information,
please contact:
Gelato Federation
Nan Holda
nan@gelato.org
+1 (217) 265-0947
Intel and Itanium
are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries
in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered
trademark of Linus
Torvalds in several countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein
are the property of their respective owners.
# # #
Web Site = http://www.gelato.org
Contact Details
= Nan Holda
1308 W. Main St., Urbana, IL 61801
nan@gelato.org
217.265.0947
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