CC*Compute: From classroom to the lab: NMSU responds to the changing HPC landscape in New Mexico

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New Mexico State University (NMSU), a Minority-Serving Institution and Hispanic-Serving Institution, recognizes the vital need for universal access to a high performance computing (HPC) facility. Increasing the computational resources at NMSU, including storage, supports NMSU’s high research need, instructors interested in incorporating HPC into their classroom activities, and state-wide collaborations with faculty who are excited to have a supportive HPC team to assist their classrooms. New Mexico as a state has a high need for personnel experienced with HPC use, but lacks resources dedicated to student learning. By utilizing existing relationships between NMSU and other NM-based universities, the new resources increase HPC-based classroom activities around the state through a dedicated queue. Students trained in HPC use are in high demand both in industry and academia, providing our students with new opportunities. Much of the research performed on the HPC is either unfunded or funded through smaller grants that cannot purchase dedicated HPC resources and many users start on their HPC journey without the basic knowledge of Unix or how to use an HPC. Time on regional and national super clusters is valuable and not a good learning environment for those who are beginning their venture into computing-intensive science. With extensive collaborations across institutions and already having streamlined NMSU-affiliated user on-boarding and account creation, NMSU is key in increasing HPC knowledge across the entire state.This activity expands the existing HPC resources at NMSU by roughly 30% through the acquisition of 10 compute nodes each with 36 CPU cores, at least 256 GB of RAM and 960 GB of local storage for a total of 360 cores, two GPU nodes similar to the compute nodes but with dual Tesla V100 GPUs, 600 TB of network connected storage, and Infiniband interconnect hardware. The cluster supports both research and educational activities in a range of fields from biology and environmental sciences to physics, chemistry, and material science.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.