CC* Compute: Accelerating Computational Research for Engineering and Science (ACRES) at Clarkson University, A Campus Cluster Proposal

Clarkson University, Potsdam NY

Investigators

Abstract

Clarkson University is building a computational cluster (ACRES: Accelerating Computation Research for Engineering and Science) to support data and computationally intensive projects aligned with Clarkson's four interdisciplinary research themes: Data Analytics, Healthy World Solutions, Advanced Materials Development, and Next Generation Healthcare. ACRES facilitates the conduct of high-impact, collaborative research that requires access to high-performance computing (HPC) resources, enables research currently not practical/feasible, and also supports student-learning opportunities through credit-bearing courses, undergraduate research, and an existing NSF REU site focusing on HPC. As a campus resource, ACRES is made available to any faculty member or student at the University according to queueing policies implemented to ensure fair-access. And, ACRES supports Clarkson's increased focus on computational research and a cluster hire of computationally active faculty. The ACRES compute cluster replaces an existing, five-year-old high-performance compute cluster whose computational capacity provided 1.05M core-h/yr. Research need for computational capacity has grown to an identified total of 8.5M core-h/yr. ACRES is sized to meet current demands and modest near-term growth with unused computational capacity being shared via the Open Science Grid (OSG) to benefit the broader scientific community. This new computational resource provides 9.8M core-h/year through 1120 cores, high-speed Infiniband interconnect, four NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, and 40 TB of scratch storage. 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.