Cadets Joe Rice and Ryan Roper receive ARSC commemorative
coins from ARSC Associate Director, Barbara Horner-Miller.
Future military leaders must understand how to use world-class
computational tools to aid in decision-making. High performance
computational technology can assist our leaders in making rapid,
informed decisions in times of combat and peace. In an effort to
support the education of these future leaders, ARSC hosts cadets
from various military academies each year to spend several weeks
working and learning at the center. These cadets work one- on-one
with ARSC experts learning about the day-to-day workings of high
performance computing.
Over the past four years, ARSC has hosted cadets from the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy at
Colorado Springs as part of a coordinated effort by the Department
of Defense’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program
Office (HPCMPO) to increase collaboration between the military
and the HPCMP centers. The cadets work side-by-side with ARSC staff
members on specific projects, learning about supercomputing and
related technologies.
Over the years, projects have included: using ARSC systems to translate
benchmark codes to C and then parallelize them using OpenMP, investigating
portable high-density storage formats, and comparing optimal performance
between the Cray SX-6 and other ARSC systems such as the IBM Regatta.
Often, the cadets come to the center with a general computer
science background and little or no experience with supercomputing.
The
program works to quickly bring them up to speed in the field
of high performance computing, while also giving them a chance
to
experience a variety of computing platforms available at ARSC.
Cadets are encouraged to assist in designing the projects they
will work on during the internship.
U.S. Air Force cadets, Joe Rice and Ryan Roper, take
a break from a summer of supercomputing with their ARSC
mentors, Kate Hedstrom, Ed Kornkven and Tom Baring.
“
It was a pleasure to work with the cadets,” said ARSC vector
specialist Ed Kornkven who worked with cadets Joe Rice and Ryan
Roper of the U.S. Air Force Academy during the summer of 2003. “They
were undaunted by being thrown into a new environment and enthusiastically
dove in to their new assignments.”
Rice spent his summer porting the “gflop” code to the
high performance computing platforms at ARSC. ARSC MPP specialist
and research liaison, Guy Robinson, designed the gflop code to
achieve the theoretical peak performance of the Cray SV1ex. Rice’s
task was to get the code running on other platforms at the center.
Cadet Roper spent his summer doing comparative benchmarking.
He came to the center with limited UNIX exposure and was able
to come
up to speed and move forward with his project very quickly. “It
was a great experience learning from the ARSC personnel about a
subject with which I have had no exposure,” he said. “I
learned a lot and I hope I can pass it on. I’m sure it will
serve me well in the future.”
The ARSC cadet program is open to students from any of the military
service academies, including the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S.
Air Force Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Merchant
Marine Academy. The ARSC point of contact for this program is vector
specialist .
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