Announcements
17 February 2011
The Nvidia CUDA development kit has been updated to version 4.1.
24 Jan 2012
DAS-4/ASTRON has succesfully correlated three hours of data coming from 288 LOFAR antennas, possibly setting a world record.
13 Jan 2012
The GPU page documents how the OpenCL implementations on DAS-4 can be used.
15 November 2011
DAS-4/VU achieved the 16th place on the Graph500 list. A very good result, as all higher-ranked systems are significantly bigger.
11 May 2011
DAS-4 supports the OpenNebula package for Cloud computing.
About the name DAS
DAS is an acronym for the "Distributed ASCI Supercomputer". As our current wide-area computing installation is the fourth in a sequence, we refer to it as: DAS-4.
ASCI is an acronym for "Advanced School for Computing and Imaging", a Dutch graduate school established in 1993 and accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Research groups of Delft University of Technology, VU University, University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, University Utrecht, University of Twente, University of Groningen, Eindhoven Technical University and the Erasmus University Rotterdam participate in ASCI.
...and the other meanings of DAS in Dutch
The word 'das' has two completely unrelated meanings in Dutch:
- Badger, the burrowing animal with short,
thick legs, and long claws on the fore feet.
'Badger' is quite in keeping with a tradition of naming projects after
black-and-white animals, (e.g.:
Ibis,
Orca,
Panda,
and
MagPIe).
- Necktie, or the thing that reduces the bloodflow to your head in case you are in pursuit of a career.
