$10-million system will expand national capacity for coupled HPC, AI and data and serve nontraditional and traditional high-performance-computing communities
A $10-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding a new supercomputer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), a joint research center of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
In partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), PSC will deploy Bridges-2, a system designed to provide researchers in Pennsylvania and the nation with massive computational capacity and the flexibility to adapt to the rapidly evolving field of data- and computation-intensive research. Bridges-2 will be available at no cost for research and education, and at cost-recovery rates for other purposes.
“Unlocking the power of data will accelerate discovery to advance science, improve our quality of life and enhance national competitiveness,” said Nick Nystrom, PSC’s chief scientist and principal investigator (PI) for Bridges-2. “We designed Bridges-2 to drive discoveries that will come from the rapid evolution of research, which increasingly needs new, scalable ways for combining large, complex data with high-performance simulation and modeling.”
Bridges-2 will accelerate discovery to benefit science, society, and the nation. Its unique architecture will catalyze breakthroughs in critically important areas such as understanding the brain, developing new materials for sustainable energy production and quantum computing, assembling genomes of crop species to improve agricultural efficiency, exploring the universe via multimessenger astrophysics and enabling technologies for smart cities.
Building on PSC’s experience with its very successful Bridges system, Bridges-2 will take the next step in pioneering converged, scalable high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI) and data. Designed to power and scale applications identified through close collaboration with the national research community, Bridges-2 will integrate cutting-edge processors, accelerators, large memory, an all-flash storage array and exceptional data-handling capabilities to let researchers meet challenges that otherwise would be out of reach. By enabling AI to be combined with simulation and modeling and through its focus on ease of use and researcher productivity, Bridges-2 will drive a new era of research breakthroughs.
“Bridges-2 is a major leap forward for PSC in high-performance computing and data analytics infrastructure and research,” said Alan D. George, Interim Director of PSC. “PSC is unique in combining the strengths of two world-class universities (CMU and Pitt) and a world-class medical center (UPMC). Bridges-2 will amplify these strengths to fuel many new discoveries.”
“Enabling the execution of science, engineering and non-traditional workflows at scale while leveraging and further developing artificial intelligence is vital to keeping the United States at the forefront of scientific discovery now and into the future,” said Paola Buitrago, Director of Artificial Intelligence & Big Data at PSC and co-PI of Bridges. “The Bridges-2 system is the way to realize this and more. I look forward to all the knowledge, discoveries and progress this new system will produce.”
Bridges-2’s community data collections and user-friendly interfaces are designed to democratize participation in science and engineering and foster collaboration and convergence research. The Bridges-2 project includes bringing the benefits of scalable data analytics and AI to industry, developing STEM talent to strengthen the nation’s workforce and broadening collaborations to accelerate discovery.
The NSF is funding Bridges-2 as part of a series of awards for Advanced Computing Systems & Services.
“The capabilities and services these awards will provide will enable the research community to explore new computing models and paradigms,” said Manish Parashar, Office Director for the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure at NSF. “These awards complement NSF’s long-standing investment in advanced computational infrastructure, providing much-needed support for the full range of innovative computational- and data-intensive research being conducted across all of science and engineering.”
Bridges-2 will be deployed in the summer of 2020.
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