Status and Progress

Current Status

Presently working in Bucharest, on code development. (date stamp January 2011)

Timeline

July 2009	The research project starts at 1.07.2009. The spaces at the Physics Department where I will work will be: - Office space. I will have one desk in this room. Recently we have received a donation from Prof. P.L.Biermann (Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy, Bonn) consisting in his personal collection of journals (A& A, ApJ, Nature) over the last 25 years. The collection, that is still in boxes, will occupy all the wall on the left where supports will be installed. Further work will be done for the modernization of the office space. - Computer space. The HPC cluster will be located in this room. The space was previously used for ventilation purposes, an adaptation will be made in order to support the heat generation of the cluster. The room is already acoustically insulated. Works on the electric wiring and ventilation system, as well as a general cleanup are needed. - Didactic space. This is the Laboratory of Astrophysics, where courses and seminars are held for the students. A restructuration of the space is planned, as well as the network connection for the PCs.
November 2009	The first part of the funds for Phase I of the project is received by the University from the Contracting Authority.
September 2009	The Project's webpage is created and made public. I created a temporary workspace in the office, with an existing PC and monitor.
November 2009	The paper on HH30 was published in A&A (link) New aquisitions: one color printer and one b/w multifunctional printer. The auction for the aquisition of a cluster High Power Computing system was organized.
December 2009	The cluster was delivered, at a price of approx 15000 euros. 2 blades HP460c, c3000 enclosure, rack, UPS 5500VA. Working on connecting it to LAN and parallelizing issues. Four UPS units APC 1500 were delivered for the protection of the existing and newly acquired IT equipment.
January 2010	Research cooperation visit at the University of Turin, Italy.
February 2010	The computers used in the project, including the network in the Astrophysics laboratory and the HP cluster, were interconnected via Gigabit Ethernet, and connected to the Internet through the Department network (whose server was also upgraded).
June 2010	The contract for the air conditioning of the computers room was signed. Installation is scheduled for August The procedure for the aquisition of 4 upgrade blades for the cluster was initiated, but later cancelled for procedure issues. Participation at the IAUS 270: Computational Star Formation conference in Barcelona, Spain.
July-August 2010	Computational time grant HPC Europa2 (35000 CPU hours) and research visit at CINECA Bologna and the University of Turin.
July 2010	The spaces at the Faculty of Physics affected by the project are: - Office space. Because of the financial crisis in Romania, all the aquisition of furniture was stopped, so I had to do the best with the old one. The shelfs for the collection of astrophysics journals were not yet built. However, the working space now has two desks with internet connection, PC with UPS, one color printer and one b/w printer/copier. The PC is connected via Gigabit ethernet to the cluster downstairs. - Computer space. The HPC cluster will be located in this room. The space is currently used as a deposit, in August the modernization will begin.
September 2010	The air conditioning units (2 x 24000 BTU and one 18000 BTU with automatic humidity control) were installed in the future server room. Participation at the IAUS 275: Jets at all scales conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Invited lecture at the National Physics Conference 2010, Iasi, Romania.
December 2010	After the auction procedure, the upgrade blades for the cluster were purchased. The upgrade consists of 4 (four) computing blades HP BL280c, G6, 2 x quad core Intel Nehalem processors, 146GB SAS drive, one HP storage blade with 6 x 300GB SAS drives and one management blade BL 280c with one Nehalem quad-core processor. With the upgrade, the whole 8 places in the c3000 enclosure are now occupied, and the maximum theoretical computational power of the cluster reaches approx. 500GFlops (HPL).

Aquisitions

Deliverables

1. The website of the project is online (September 2009)
2. Paper published in A&A (ISI impact factor 4.3), November 2009
3. End-of-the-year evaluation and report (December 2009)
4. Presentation (poster) at conference: IAUS 270: Computational Star Formation, Barcelona, June 2010
5. Presentation (poster) at conference: IAUS 275: Jets at all scales, Buenos Aires, Sept 2010
6. Invited lecture at the National Conference on Physics 2010, Iasi, Sept 2010
7. Paper published in Romanian Reports in Physics (ISI 0.4), nr. 62, vol. 1 (2010), p.202
8. Paper published in Romanian Astronomical Journal Vol. 20, Supplement, 2010, p.45
9. End-of-the-year evaluation and report (December 2010)