CC* Regional Computing: Building Cyberinfrastructure to Forge a Regional Research Computing Alliance in Southern California

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Educational institutions in Southern California, particularly those focused on undergraduate studies, face challenges in accessing essential high-performance computing (HPC) resources and cyber-infrastructure. This lack of accessibility leads to decreased knowledge and experience with HPC among students and faculty and inhibits advancements in data-intensive research activities. The University of Southern California’s (USC) Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC) houses one of the largest HPC facilities in the region and is deploying new cyberinfrastructure to expand their services and expertise to under-resourced universities in the area. The implementation of this new HPC system with corresponding user support services further solidifies the existing collaboration between USC and the Los Nettos consortium, comprised of 6 member universities and 30 associate networks.The new system offers a similar computing environment to national HPC centers with advanced computing capacity, high-speed network, and abundant research applications and tools in its software stack. Additionally, the system leverages existing cyberinfrastructure at USC such as central file systems, HPC cluster interconnection, and federated authentication. This project significantly increases the accessibility of advanced cyberinfrastructure to students and researchers of regional institutions while catalyzing multi-institutional research collaborations, thereby forming a computational research and education hub in the region—the Southern California Research Computing Alliance.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.