IBM officials visited Ames Laboratory Monday to announce a grant worth $665,000 to research “cluster computing” at the Department of Energy’s Scalable Computing Lab.

Mark Gordon, distinguished professor of chemistry, stressed the competitiveness of the Shared University Research (SUR) grant.

“The fact that we received it says that Ames Lab’s and ISU’s combined expertise is very attractive to IBM and that they see great promise in our collaborative efforts,” Gordon said.

The cluster computer utilizes 15 dual-processor IBM workstations. Each workstation, or cluster, contains two processors. The clusters are networked to provide super computer speed more efficiently, Gordon said.

The SUR grant makes these workstations available to Iowa State for scientific and technological research.

Brett Bode, assistant scientist at Ames Lab, said the efficiency of the network is key to getting the most out the processors.

“On some applications, you can get pretty much 100 percent [of the processor’s potential],” he said. “Applications that can divide the work efficiently between the processors [work the best].”

With the help of the grant, ISU’s computer engineering department is hoping to make progress into converting conventional programming code for use with the powerful computers, Gordon said.

Gordon said a primary reason IBM bestowed the grant on ISU is because of the quality of the code written by ISU researchers. The code is used by scientists at other universities and is optimized for use on IBM machines, he said.

Jeff VerHeul, vice president of Server and Workstation Development at IBM, said Ames Lab, IBM and ISU all will benefit from the grant.

“All three organizations will benefit from the discovery and shared learning currently underway,” he said.

Cluster computing will benefit engineers who use the Mechanical Computer-Aided Drafting (MCAD) program.

“[This technology] allows engineers to significantly shorten their development time,” VerHeul said.

Gordon said he plans to develop new chemical catalysts with the cluster machine to speed up chemical reactions.

Several research groups also have expressed interest in utilizing the cluster computer, Gordon said.