MRI: Acquisition of a Next Generation, Data-Centric Supercomputer

该项目将支持伦斯勒理工学院(RPI)购买一台以数据为中心的超级计算机。该仪器将导致RPI计算创新中心(CCI)目前正在解决的应用领域的科学和工程问题取得重大进展，这些应用包括：新设计材料的定义，用于节能的主动流动控制，以及用于医疗规划的微生物系统建模。该研究还将包括开发新的极值模拟技术、图形分析算法和构建全新的模拟工作流程。来自美国11个州的20多所大学、5个能源部国家实验室、3个主要工业研究中心(康宁、通用电气和IBM)、50名教职员工和4家初创企业的数百名研究人员和学生将利用这一拟议的网络工具继续对他们的研究产生深刻影响。学生的参与是CCI目前成功的关键，预计国家利益不仅是因为该仪器有能力推进当前的研究，还因为它有可能成为未来艾级系统的原型模型。参与该仪器支持的项目的学生将成为下一代计算和数据密集型专家。新仪器将IBM POWER9 CPU与新一代NVIDIA Volta GPU集成到一个硬件加速统一存储系统中(例如，高速缓存一致性)。此外，所有计算节点都增加了非易失性内存存储，并且这些节点的子集包括FPGA加速。该系统将由教师、学生和CCI合作者使用，以解决目前因需要与下一代模拟工具中使用和产生的海量数据进行交互而造成的障碍。即将开展的网络仪器和算法开发将使我们能够更好地理解并增强我们解决许多关键挑战的能力，这些挑战包括：直接从大规模图像数据集中准确诊断乳腺癌；对丰富的异质、多模和多尺度数据进行语义集成，以改善个人健康；对聚变反应堆中的等离子体进行建模；对主动流动控制设备进行建模，这种设备将大大增加风力涡轮机发电的天气条件；该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。

The project will support the acquisition of a data centric supercomputer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). This instrument will lead to significant advancements in science and engineering problems currently being tackled at RPI's Center for Computational Innovations (CCI) for applications including: the definition of new designed materials, applying active flows control for energy savings and microbiological systems modeling for medical treatment planning. The research will also include the development of new extreme-scale simulation technologies, graph analysis algorithms and the construction of entirely new simulation workflows. Hundreds of researchers and students from over 20 universities, 5 DOE national laboratories, 3 major industrial research centers (Corning, GE and IBM), 50 faculty, 4 start-ups across 11 U.S. states will take advantage of this proposed cyberinstrument to continue making a deep impact on their research. Student participation has been key to CCI's current success and national interest is anticipated not only due to the instrument's ability to advance current research but also due to its potential as a prototype model for future exascale systems. Students engaged in projects supported by the instrument will become the next generation of compute and data intensive experts.The new instrument integrates IBM POWER9 CPUs with next generation NVIDIA Volta GPUs into a hardware accelerated unified memory system (e.g., cache coherent). Additionally, all compute nodes are augmented with non-volatile memory storage, and a subset of the nodes include FPGA acceleration. The system will be used by faculty, students and CCI collaborators to address current barriers caused by the need to interact with massive data volumes that are used in and produced by next generation simulation tools. The cyberinstrument and algorithmic developments to be carried out will enable a new level of understanding and enhance our ability to solve many key challenges including: the accurate diagnosis of breast cancer directly from large-scale image datasets; semantic integration of the abundance of heterogeneous, multimodal, and multiscale data to improve personal health; modeling plasmas in fusion reactors; modeling active flow control devices that will greatly increase the weather conditions under which wind turbines will produce electricity; and combined biological data and model integration on molecular, cellular, and organ levels to understand organism-level phenomena and gain predictive understanding in systems biology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.