MRI-R2: Acquisition of a GPU-accelerated High-Performance Computing Cluster

Drexel University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Studying the way molecules interact in proteins and polymers, or how stars interact dynamically in very dense clusters, requires very powerful and very fast computers. The capabilities of certain kinds of computer processors, called Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) have been expanding rapidly due to a large commercial market. They are now faster, and cheaper, than conventional Central Processing Units (CPUs) at the heart of most computers. Dr. Stephen McMillan and his colleagues at Drexel University are proposing to use these fast, efficient, and affordable CPUs to speed up the very complicated and lengthy computations needed in to model the behavior of large collections of stars or molecules. NSF's Major Research Instrumentation program is funding Dr. McMillan's work through its Division of Astronomical Sciences.