Linux clusters gear up for simulated combat

The U.S. Air Force's Maui High Performance Computing Center and the Major Shared Resource Center of the Aeronautical Systems Center will each install a 256-processor Linux cluster from Linux Networx for simulating battle conditions, the Salt Lake City-based company announced.

Military personnel at Joint Forces Command, an umbrella organization spanning the different military departments in the country, will use the computers to simulate battle activity, such as mass troop movements or how vehicles interact in a supply line. The two clusters are part of a larger contract Linux Networx won with the Department of Defense earlier this year to deliver six clusters, including a 2,132-processor system for the Army Research Laboratory. Both Linux Networx clusters delivered to MHPCC and MSRC are based on 3.06GHz Xeon chips from Intel and software from Linux Networx.