Computer Cluster

The Vibrations and Acoustics lab has a cluster of PCs for rapid prototyping and of algorithms and numerical simulation.  The hardware consists of a 9-node rack of HP workstations running the GNU/Linux operating system.  With a total of 18 processors and 36GB of memory, computations can be quickly implemented in parallel.  Numerous open-source and commercial software packages including Matlab (with toolboxes) are available to minimize the programming required. 

In addition to the benefit of commercial software for rapid prototyping, the open-source MPI library is installed for true parallel computing.  This requires programming in a more low-level language such as C or Fortran, but provides the maximum performance and scalability to larger clusters such as Virginia Tech's System-X.  Also, the VAL cluster is run in cooperation with the Virginia Tech Electrical Engineering (ECE) department's computation cluster.  Larger jobs can be run on both clusters simultaneously.