Planning IUCRC Northeastern University: Center for Cloud and Data Center-Scale Computing (DCSC)

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Cloud computing has become pervasive in recent years, with a large fraction of enterprise computing moving to the cloud, and entire categories of new enterprises exclusively using the cloud rather than on-premises servers. Yet to date innovation in cloud computing has been difficult for members of organizations - whether academic or industrial - which are not one of a small number of large cloud providers. Many advances have depended on not only access to large-scale computing environments, but also to users and their applications, to (a) inform research with data on what problems to target, and (b) evaluate how proposed technologies might address real problems or enable new uses. The Center for Data Center Scale Computing (DCSC) seeks to increase the pace of innovation in this field by making the prerequisites for such research available to faculty and industrial collaborators. DCSC seeks to harness the computing demand within participating academic institutions to both inform research and provide a path for evaluation and translation into practice. At the same time, the Center will take advantage of open-source licensing to allow close collaboration between university researchers and industrial partners, allowing engineering and system-building on a level difficult to achieve solely within a university environment. Particular areas of focus of the Center at Northeastern University include data storage for the cloud, including emerging storage technologies and storage for Big Data and machine learning, and the use of new accelerator technologies.Broader impacts of this work will come in part from development of new technologies for cloud systems, storage, and platforms, especially those targeting use cases outside of the main public cloud markets, such as academic, research, and hybrid clouds; the impact of these developments will be amplified by the wide-spread use of cloud computing. Graduate students will be involved in high-quality research projects, and both graduate and undergraduate students in support roles will receive training in skills of value to industry. In recruiting students for Center positions we will work closely with Northeastern's ALIGN program and its diversity efforts.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.