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Otago becomes Sun
Microsystems Centre of Excellence
The University of Otago
has achieved a coup by becoming the first university outside
of the United States to be selected as a Sun Microsystems
OpenSPARC Centre of Excellence.
Sun Microsystems is
one of the world’s most advanced computer vendors
developing innovative products and services that power the
network economy. Headquartered in the United States of
America with a presence in over 100 countries, a significant
part of Sun’s program is based on “open source
leadership”, through the companies OpenSPARC initiative
(Scalable Processor Architecture).
The initiative
involves a large global network of researchers, programmers,
engineers, technologists, industry representatives and Sun
executives working on collaborative projects addressing the
ever-increasing demand for more powerful computers.
OpenSPARC focuses on the development of both hardware and
software to meet rapidly-growing demand for computer chips
containing multiple processors, known as multi-core.
Sun
Microsystems has OpenSPARC Technology Centre of Excellence
relationships with only seven universities worldwide;
University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Texas,
Austin; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Carnegie Mellon University;
Stanford University; and now the University of Otago.
For Otago, the relationship is a prestigious recognition
of the University’s expertise in computer architecture,
networking and parallel computing. It also allows Otago
access to the OpenSPARC community (including the other six
universities) and access for staff and students to equipment
and technical expertise.
Otago Computer Science
researcher Dr Zhiyi Huang and Information Science Head
Professor Martin Purvis are part of the Otago team working
on several projects of interest to Sun Microsystems – the
most high-profile being the Virtual Aggregated Processor, or
VAP. VAP is based on building virtualisation software to
utilise the power of the new generation multi-core computer
chips.
Professor Purvis says the relationship is
about more than prestige. “It also gives us a relationship
with Sun’s research labs and opens doors to interact with
the other universities.”
Dr Huang says his VAP
work involves developing tools that will significantly
reduce the burden on computer programmers of using the
parallel programming techniques needed to harness the full
potential of multi-core computers.
“Parallel programming
has a long history but is very difficult. We are confident
that VAP will be a New Zealand-led solution to help the
computer industry manage the fundamental change of
multi-core computers replacing the existing single core
technology.”
Sun Microsystems New Zealand Country
Manager John Mazenier says Sun is excited to partner with
New Zealand’s most research intensive university, through
the Centre of Excellence initiative. “We believe the
alliance will not only draw upon the expertise demonstrated
by Otago University but will also display the groundbreaking
and innovative technologies and further promote Sun’s
existing solutions.”
New Zealand Supercomputer Centre
Business Development Manager Scott Houston says the Otago
research is of interest to the Centre, which also has a
relationship with Sun Microsystems, because of the
commercial opportunities it presents.
“We build
on-demand engines, which involve taking large problems,
breaking them into processes and solving these problems
using large numbers of computers. However, some
computational problems cannot be ‘broken down’ or
parallelized, such as climate modeling and human
physiology.
“In those cases, you have to see the whole
problem and we need to aggregate a large numbers of
computers to address the problem as one system, the work the
Otago team are doing addresses
this.”
Read the original article: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE0807/S00128.htm
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