Bird's Eye View of the Main KAOS Lab, January 9, 2012
Facilities
To correct the problems in a parallel computer system, you have
to first know what the problems really are. This requires a
fair selection of computer hardware and software. Further, we
often have to build our own hardware and software systems to
correct the problems that we find, so we also need fabrication
and test facilities.... At the University of Kentucky, all of
this is KAOS.
Speaking of chaos, anybody trying to find our facilities on the
University of Kentucky's campus will note an interesting array
of similar names for different buildings and different names for
the same building. Most of this confusion comes from the Ralph G. Anderson Building, abbreviated
RGAN (why not RGAB?). As of Fall 2003, the building
formerly known as Anderson Hall is now officially F. Paul Anderson Tower, often refered to as
Anderson Tower. On campus maps, it is listed by the
initials AH or FPAT. RGAN is next to FPAT,
and one building further past RGAN is Patterson Office Tower, which has always been
abbreviated as POT (not PAT). Oh yeah. We're also
quite spread out, from FPAT all the way to the
new Davis Marksbury Building, which as of May 2012
officially still is abbreviated as N/A. Ugh. Got it?
In any case, generic directions to UK are here; visitors can
park in Parking Structure #5.
Our group's current facilities, all at the University of Kentucky, include:
-
Primary KAOS Cluster Supercomputer Machine Room (Marksbury 108a, UK)
Our primary machine room. This is not even close to being a "big" facility,
but it has 30 tons of cooling and 72 20A circuits, which makes it plenty
big for holding clusters for computer engineering systems research. It's
also green, with excess heat used to warm the building.
Clusters currently there include:
-
NAK: NVIDIA Athlon cluster in Kentucky
-
ACK: AMD/ATI Cluster in Kentucky
-
RAK: Reconfigurable (FPGA) Athlon cluster in Kentucky
-
CIK: Core2 Intel cluster in Kentucky
-
AXK: AMD Athlon X2 cluster in Kentucky
-
EM: ElectroMagnetics cluster (Opteron based)
-
DAX: Disk Athlon eXperiment (a cluster disk array testbed)
-
Prof. Dietz's Office (Marksbury 203, UK)
It's a very pretty corner office with two glass walls --
and all the glare you'd expect on any display in the room. ;)
There are a few toys there, such as the programmable paper cutter
that we use for making custom computational photography apertures,
but mostly it's just Prof. Dietz's office and sensors that let
people know when he's there and available.
-
Secondary KAOS Cluster Supercomputer Machine Room (FPAT672, UK)
Air conditioning and fan noise make this room unfit for human occupancy,
but the machines like it. It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't
want your desk there. It's a fairly large room, but only has 5 tons
of cooling; this makes it a good space for experimenting with novel
network designs, which often are very space intensive.
Contact Hank Dietz for further info.
-
HAK: Half-powered Athlon cluster in Kentucky
-
PIK: Pentium 4 Intel cluster in Kentucky
(a really boring 32-node cluster on a single, rollable, rack for demos)
-
Electrical Engineering Laboratory (Marksbury 108, UK)
This laboratory, connected to our machine room in 108a, is home to our
group and students from two other electrical engineering faculty.
As seen in the photo at the top of this page, our student desks are
in the 1/3 of the room adjacent to 108a, and are arranged as a room
without walls rather than the "Dilbert space" somebody intended it to be --
this greatly facilitates collaboration between students, as does the
shared woork table and meeting area in 108. In fact, the meeting area
in 108 is larger than any conference room in the Marksbury building,
and that's how we like it.
-
Computer Assembly Room (Marksbury 114, UK)
This room, also connected to room 108,
is reserved for assembly/construction/maintenance of hardware,
including soldering custom network boards, etc.
Honestly, it's been more of a parts storage area so far
(not enough closets in Marksbury).
-
KAOS Software Development lab (DVT302, UK)
Facilities No Longer In Operation
The following facilities once played key roles in our work,
but are no longer in operation.
-
KAOS Software Development lab (DVT302, UK)
Once, this was the OCL ("Open Computing Lab" -- see below), but it is
on the 3rd floor of a building that is not handicap accessible.
It became our primary place for humans, and then somewhat functionally
redundant with Marksbury 108 now. It has workstation desks and a conference
area, but the building is far from our other facilities. It is destined
for other uses as of May 2010.
-
KAOS Little Machine Room (DVT301, UK)
This once held "safe playground" clusters for users in DVT302.
-
Prof. Dietz's Office (FPAT469, UK)
Now it's 203 Marksbury.
-
KAOS Software Development Laboratory (FPAT577, UK)
This laboratory, now logically replaced by DVT302 and Marksbury 108,
was originally operated as Dr. Bill Dieter's laboratory.
It was intended to serve as a workstation room
for KAOS projects involving software development. It once held:
- Opus (our 2nd 6,400x4,800 pixel video wall cluster)
(overview GIF)
pending space in the new visualization center
- 9+1 1GHz Athlon 4 HP laptop mobile cluster & video wall
- Two "safe playground" clusters
-
The Open Computing Laboratory (DVT302 and then FPAT577, UK)
The OCL was a laboratory created to support computer engineering
projects that required access to the computer systems software
and hardware. The concept was to be "Open" is three ways: (1)
room unlocked for 24/7 student access, (2) machines running
fully open-source software, and (3) all hardware open to
students making changes or connecting their own custom circuits
-- sometimes even accidentally frying something. Our research
group kept this lab stocked with a couple of dozen "sacrificial"
PCs which were mostly made from old cluster nodes. It was
originally in DVT302, but that building is not handicap
accessible, so it was later moved to FPAT577.
Sadly, the OCL was squeezed out of existence in 2011. Although the UK
administration soon reapproved it, the equipment and space it had are gone
and thus it is still awaiting rebirth....
-
Clusters formerly in the KAOS Laboratory Machine Room (672 Anderson Hall, UK)
Originally, all of KAOS was in this one lab. Machines included:
-
KAOS Hardware Development & Maintenance Facility (FPAT695, UK)
This room was reserved for assembly/construction/maintenance of hardware,
including soldering custom network boards, etc.
- The Flock (315 McVey Hall, UK)
The Flock, significant as the first AMD K6 cluster,
was operated by the Center for Computational Science.
-
Parallel Processing Laboratory (MSEE212-214, Purdue)
This is where it all started.
Generic directions to Purdue are here; the lab was
across the street from the Visitor Center on Northwestern.
The Aggregate facilities there were slowly retired or repurposed after Dietz
left Purdue in 1999, and are now long gone.
The only thing set in stone is our name.
