General Purpose High Performance Computing for Valparaiso University

Level of Education of Students Involved

Undergraduate

Faculty Sponsor

Nicholas Rosasco

College

College of Engineering (COE)

Discipline(s)

Computer Engineering, Computer Science

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation

Symposium Date

Spring 4-30-2026

Abstract

This project was about creating a high performance computing capacity for Valparaiso University. The effort has three phases, two of which were completed in Spring 2026. the first was to define and select high performance computing equipment. This included comparing the specifications of numerous servers, network switches, and networked storage devices to find the most optimal pairing of components, including high end server hardware and 100 Gb networking infrastructure needed to support distributed computing.

In addition to the equipment selection, the system will be evaluated and predictions of the performance profile of these machines will be made. To most accurately assess the computational power of these machines without having them physically on site, a specific set of benchmarks are being created. Furthermore, specific components will be evaluated to determine if any is likely to bottleneck the performance of the entire cluster. Additionally, this project has created the framework for streamlining the upcoming deployment of the selected systems and devices, which will ultimately support a range of future research, computational needs, and digital workloads at the university.

Biographical Information about Author(s)

Noah James is majoring in computer engineering.

Ben Gaddini is majoring in computer engineering.

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