Advanced CyberInfrastructure for High Performance, Data Intensive Computing

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This infrastructure project will renovate a data center in the Bloomberg Center on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University. The data center space will be refurbished to provide a flexible, stable, energy efficient environment for the high density of computing equipment needed to support research and research training in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Whiting School of Engineering and Sheridan Libraries. The power capacity will be increased by a factor of six and the network connections from the renovated space to the campus networking core and to Internet2 will be increased from 1 GigE to 10 GigE. The renovated space will be used to assemble and house state-of-the art equipment that will transform the scale and types of calculations that can be performed, directly affecting research by 36 faculty from a dozen departments. This will enable more sophisticated calculations that will advance understanding of materials, turbulence, astronomy, environmental science, climate, high-energy physics, and biological systems. The renovated data center will provide an energy efficient facility for data intensive computing, with rapid network access for researchers across the Homewood Campus and beyond, serving as a focal point for interdisciplinary activities in computational science and engineering. The ten-fold increase in the speed of the Internet2 connection will benefit remote users of data repositories stored in the center, as well as researchers in the Schools of Public Health and Medicine. The renovated center will provide the space and network bandwidth needed to host databases and research programs of broad use and interest, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the U. S. Virtual Astronomy Observatory, SkyQuery, Pan-STARRS, and the Data Conservancy. Training students to use new computational tools and algorithms effectively will have an important impact on the nation's industries and on research in universities and in national laboratories. The renovated research and training facility will be central to research training initiatives, exciting young students about possible careers in science and engineering and aiding in recruiting a diverse pool of interested students. As an example, students in the JHU IGERT on modeling complex systems will use the expanded data center and the 100Teraflop Graphics Processor Laboratory, enabled by the renovation, to implement and apply new algorithms. JHU is committed to expanding participation in science and engineering activities, such as through the IGERT project, which is partnering with women?s colleges and other universities with a high percentage of students from underrepresented groups.