“Purdue University’s IT department dedicated May 5 to assembling
Dell PowerEdge servers into a campus supercomputer to replace its
existing research unit. It had the new machine assembled from
component parts by noon, and at 1 p.m., 500 nodes were churning out
results.“‘There were no problems installing the hardware or software.
There is no cloud to accompany this silver lining,’ said Gerry
McCartney, university CIO, who had the idea of a staff-assembled
supercomputer. ‘The assembly was much faster than we expected. By
noon we were doing science,’ he said in the Purdue News Service
summary of the event…”