Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

With a videographer from Intel Corporation recording his every move, Earlham Associate Professor of Computer Science Charlie Peck uses a single screwdriver to put together a working network server during the SuperComputing '06 conference in Tampa, Fla. Peck accomplished the task in 10 minutes flat, bettering the attempts of six other contestants from universities nationwide.

RICHMOND, Ind. — Although a new Ultimate Geek was crowned at SC07, Earlham College Associate Professor of Computer Science Charlie Peck easily held on to his record for the fastest time ever in the annual competition.

Peck assembled a cluster node in 10 minutes flat during SC06 and was named Ultimate Geek. Sam Fulcomer from Brown University, this year’s Ultimate Geek contest winner, completed the task in 11 minutes.

Intel Corporation sponsors the Ultimate Geek contest each year during the Supercomputing Conference and invites college professors and students to demonstrate their computer building skills.

The annual winner is awarded an Intel server cluster valued at more than $30,000. Peck says Earlham has been putting the cluster to good use.

“The Intel High Performance Computing geek cluster has enabled the computer science department to expand our computationally based services in a variety of ways,” Peck says. “We now have the facilities to support both research projects and educational tools for the chemistry and biology departments at Earlham, and more broadly through the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI) and the Supercomputing Conference Education Program.”

Before receiving the Intel cluster, Earlham had about 100 gigaflops of processing power on campus. The Intel cluster has added about 700 gigaflops.

Peck uses the cluster to teach computational science and high performance computing to college and high school science teachers through NCSI. He also used the cluster in working with Navajo Technical College in New Mexico to extend computer access throughout the Crown Point reservation, and he has joined the cluster to the Open Science Terra Grid project, which provides access to powerful computational resources for large-scale research.

Fulcomer says he plans to put his cluster to work on projects such as data analysis for virtual reality Mars exploration, hydrogen/metal interaction modeling for hydrogen storage and transport, and prototype neural modeling, according to Intel’s Web site.

To commemorate his record accomplishment, Intel featured Peck in a variety of promotional materials including a life-size cardboard cutout of the Earlham professor in its Ultimate Geek booth at SC07.

Contact:
Mark Blackmon, director of media relations
765/983-1256 — E-Mail Mark