A cosmic ray shower occurs in an instant, but analyzing it can take days of computer time with ordinary processors. Steve Stochaj, director of the Particle Astrophysics Laboratory at New Mexico State University, aims to cut that time dramatically by custom-building a parallel computer system that offers supercomputing capabilities at a fraction of the cost. The project will not only facilitate the cosmic ray research of Stochaj and his colleagues, it will also give NMSU students opportunities for hands-on experience in the emerging field of parallel computing. And the simulation software will be made available free to other cosmic ray researchers worldwide.
Cosmic rays are subatomic particles from space that constantly bombard the earth.
Where they come from and how they accelerate to their high energy levels are matters of speculation, but learning more about them is important to understanding the structure and evolution of the universe, Stochaj said. The alternative, a supercomputer, is much more expensive, he noted. A hundred thousand dollars buys nothing in the supercomputer world, but it buys a lot of PCs. The system will use processors with Alpha chips, which can handle larger segments of data than the Pentium-based processors that many PCs use, he said. The processors will be coupled together with special message-passing hardware and software that will enable complex computational workloads to be divided among the processors.