IUCRC Phase I Northeastern University: Center for Systems Innovation at Scale (i-Scale)

大规模系统创新中心（i-Scale）是一个由NSF赞助的工业大学合作研究中心（IUCRC），在东北大学和波士顿大学设有站点，解决企业级计算的挑战。这些大规模共享系统是当今计算领域的一个普遍组成部分，并为行业相关研究提供了独特的机会。i-Scale中心探索这些计算系统在大规模上面临的挑战，包括软件和硬件层。它通过与大众开放云联盟（MOC-A）和马萨诸塞州绿色高性能计算中心（MGHPCC）的合作伙伴关系，利用不同学术用户的计算需求，为研究提供信息，并提供评估和转化为实践的路径。该中心进一步利用开源许可来促进大学研究人员和工业合作伙伴之间的合作，允许在大学环境中难以实现的水平上进行工程和系统建设。随着计算规模的增长，计算机系统中的学术研究人员面临的挑战也在增长，因为大规模观察真实的用户、应用程序和系统变得越来越困难。i-Scale与行业合作伙伴和大型学术计算设施合作，这些设施是计算机系统研究的独特工具。i-Scale的研究重点是大规模计算的各个方面，东北大学的研究重点包括数据存储系统、系统软件、硬件加速器、安全和隐私、编译器和运行时系统、节能和弹性计算、物联网（IoT）和边缘计算。i-Scale不仅致力于推动数据中心和计算技术的界限，而且还与其行业赞助商和开源社区合作，将这项研究转化为实践。 通过与在大规模计算的前沿运营的公司和开源项目的合作伙伴关系，该中心通过校园经验和东北合作计划，为本科生和研究生提供培训和开发行业相关技术技能的关键经验，并为课程和课程提供投入，以使教学跟上该领域的最新发展。 i-Scale支持的研究项目将从为企业级系统（包括私有云和混合云）开发的新技术中获得广泛的利益，这些系统是当今计算领域的一个普遍组成部分。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Center for Systems Innovation at Scale (i-Scale) is an NSF-sponsored Industry University Collaborative Research Center (IUCRC) with sites at Northeastern University and Boston University, addressing the challenges of datacenter-scale computing. These large-scale shared systems are a pervasive part of today's computing landscape, and present unique opportunities for industry-relevant research. The i-Scale Center explores the challenges of these computing systems at large scale, across both software and hardware layers. It harnesses the computing demand of diverse sets of academic users to inform research and to provide paths for evaluation and translation into practice, via partnerships with the Mass Open Cloud Alliance (MOC-A) and the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). The Center further takes advantage of open-source licensing to facilitate collaboration between university researchers and industrial partners, allowing engineering and system-building on levels difficult to achieve within a university environment. As the scale of computing grows, so do the challenges facing academic researchers in computer systems, as it becomes increasingly difficult to observe real users, applications, and systems at scale. i-Scale collaborates with both industry partners and large-scale academic computing installations, which serve as unique instruments for computer systems research. i-Scale research focuses on all aspects of large-scale computing, with research thrusts at Northeastern including data storage systems, system software, hardware accelerators, security and privacy, compilers and runtime systems, energy-efficient and resilient computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and edge computing. i-Scale works to not only push the boundaries of data center and computing technology, but to transition this research into practice, in collaboration with its industry sponsors and the open source community. Through partnership with companies and open source projects operating at the cutting edge of large-scale computing, the Center trains and provides key experience to undergraduate and graduate students in developing industry-relevant technical skills, through both on-campus experience and the Northeastern co-op program, and provides input to coursework and curricula to keep teaching abreast of the latest developments in the field. Research projects supported by i-Scale will provide broad benefits from the development of new technologies for datacenter-scale systems, including private and hybrid clouds, that are a pervasive part of today’s computing landscape.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.