[Pipet Devel] Re: [directors] compaq beowulf cluster?

[Gary Van Domselaar]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2001, J.W. Bizzaro wrote:

> I was speaking with Prof. James Lyons-Weiler here at UMass Lowell today.  He
> told me that he will be meeting with someone from Compaq in a short while
> about "hardware needs".  I'm not clear about the purpose of the meeting, but I
> mentioned that we (Bioinformatics.org and Piper) were hoping to get a grant to
> buy a Beowulf cluster.
>
> Prof. Lyons-Weiler told me that he can procure one from Compaq.  I asked him
> about a 22-node Alpha Beowulf, valued at about $150,000.  He said that would
> be no problem, and that he could get one by the end of the semester.  He also
> mentioned setting up Beowulf "Piper nodes" across the 5 UMass campuses.
>
> Well, it'd be beyond great if he could pull it off, and maybe he can.  He's a
> new prof. with a lot of drive, and I don't think he was pulling my leg.  But,
> like everything else, we will believe it when we see it, right?



That is really, really positive news!  An investment like this in
Piper/TOL would go a long way towards establishing our credibility in the
open source bioinformatics community, if you catch my drift ;-)  Its also
very encouraging to hear others speak so confidently about our worthiness.

BTW, nice work, Jeff!

Regards,

g.
--                                                                   --
                             Gary Van Domselaar
Ph.D. Candidate,                                    Associate Director,
Faculty of Pharmacy,                   Bioinformatics.org: The Open Lab
University of Alberta                           gary at bioinformatics.org
gary at penguin.pharmacy.ualberta.ca        http://bioinformatics.org/gary
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