MRI: Acquisition of an Adaptive Computing Infrastructure to Support Compute- and Data-Intensive Multidisciplinary Research

乔治梅森大学（GMU）将收购名为Hopper的高性能计算（HPC）系统。该HPC系统将支持乔治梅森大学（GMU）所有多学科研究机构、众多部门和学术项目的高影响力研究和教育。在其他领域，霍珀将支持研究和教育项目，重点是推进交通和基础设施系统、地理和地理信息科学、天体物理学、社会媒体分析，以支持灾害信息学、计算流体动力学、材料科学、自然灾害研究、数据挖掘、计算机视觉、自动驾驶汽车、生物信息学、神经科学和经济学。Hopper还将支持GMU的大规模高性能计算用户，这些用户将在开始在大型全国性可用系统上运行之前，在本地开发、原型和基准测试他们的应用程序。该仪器将为GMU的研究人员、教育工作者、研究生和本科生研究人员提供一个非常多样化的社区。它还将使从事暑期研究项目的高中生、梦想获得四年制学位的社区大学学生、寻求第一个大学学位或提高技能以实现职业抱负的成人学习者的研究项目成为可能。除了推进尖端研究项目外，霍珀还将在培养下一代数据科学家、数学家、工程师和科学家方面发挥重要作用，以满足美国蓬勃发展的创新经济的需求。霍珀将被集中管理，并与整个梅森研究社区共享。拟议的系统基于OpenStack框架，可以重新配置，以支持Mason的各种用户需求。Hopper由4个OpenStack管理节点、35个标准计算节点、2个3TB内存高内存节点和6个gpu节点组成，全部通过IB （InfiniBand）交换机连接，支持节点与存储之间的低延迟高带宽通信。互连网络将在胖树配置中使用HDR IB交换机，并使用端口分离器为节点提供EDR IB连接。将有一个冗余的25Gbe网络基础设施和100Gbe骨干交换机，用于节点部署和虚拟机（VM）访问。该系统将有384 TB的基于Ceph的存储来支持VM部署，以及300 TB的高速低延迟BeeGFS存储供HPC使用。Hopper将同时支持传统和非传统（科学的长尾）高性能计算用户。这个新系统将取代GMU目前的HPC集群，该集群已接近其使用寿命，无法跟上用户数量的增长，并且无法满足我们的教师和学生社区现在所要求的多样化使用模式的需求。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

A high-performance computing (HPC) system, named Hopper will be acquired by George Mason University (GMU). This HPC system will support high-impact research and education across all the multidisciplinary research institutes, and numerous departments and academic programs at George Mason University (GMU). Among other areas, Hopper will enable research and education projects focused on advancing transportation and infrastructure systems, geography and geoinformation sciences, astrophysics, social media analytics to support disaster informatics, computational fluid dynamics, materials science, natural hazards research, data mining, computer vision, automated vehicles, bioinformatics, neuroscience, and economics. Hopper will also support GMU’s large-scale high-performance computing users who will develop, prototype, and benchmark their applications locally before starting production runs on large nationally available systems. The instrument will support a very diverse community of researchers, educators and graduate and undergraduate researchers at GMU. It will also enable research projects by high school students engaged in summer research projects, community college students whose dreams are to attain their four-year degree, adult learners seeking their first college degree or to upskill to realize their professional aspirations. In addition to advancing cutting-edge research projects, Hopper will be instrumental in preparing the next generation of data scientists, mathematicians, engineers and scientists to meet the needs of the Nation’s thriving innovation economy.Hopper will be managed centrally and shared with the entire Mason research community. The proposed system is based on an OpenStack framework and will be reconfigurable to support a diverse range of user needs at Mason. Hopper will consist of 4 OpenStack management nodes, 35 standard compute nodes, 2 high memory nodes with 3TB memory, and 6 nodes with graphics processing units (GPUs), all connected through InfiniBand (IB) switches to support low-latency high bandwidth communication between nodes and storage. The interconnect network will use HDR IB switches in a fat tree configuration and use port splitters to provide EDR IB connections to the nodes. There will be a redundant 25Gbe networking infrastructure with 100Gbe spine switches for node deployment and virtual machine (VM) access. The system will have 384 TB of Ceph based storage to back VM deployments, and 300 TB of high-speed low-latency BeeGFS storage for HPC use. Hopper will support both traditional as well as non-traditional (the long tail of science) high-performance computing users. This new system will replace GMU’s current HPC cluster, which is nearing the end of its useful life, is unable to keep up with growth in the number of users and was not designed to meet the needs of a diversity of usage modes now being requested by our faculty and student communities.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.