The PIs propose to acquire a multi-node cluster system equipped with GPU cards to vastly improve the high performance computing environment in the Department of Mathematics at the Florida State University. The cluster will be dedicated to research in high performance computing (HPC) and visualization as well as providing training on HPC for faculty and students. The proposed research projects that will take advantage of the power of the cluster system range from multiscale modeling and computation of liquid crystalline polymers and nanocomposites materials, biomaterials and fluid simulation, computational study of fluid flows and multiphase phenomena, and visualization using GPUs to nonlinear wave propagations in various media. Each of these projects addresses important issues for a particular material or physical system, a type of technology, or a class of mathematical equations, and aims to resolve the issues to the fullest extent using computation. The acquisition will enable us to create new capabilities in research using the cutting-edge technology in HPC and thereby impact on research as well as education in applied and computational mathematics.
The PIs at Florida State University have been conducting research in understanding and developing high performance materials, fluid flow simulation, multiphase flow motions, biomaterials modeling and simulation as well as nonlinear wave propagation in various media such as fiber optics and liquid crystal materials. These cutting edge research activities demand the support of the cutting-edge high performance computing technologies. Recently, the computing community is investing heavily in turning the graphic card originally designed for gaming purposes into a parallel data processing unit in addition to the CPU on computer systems. The developing high performance computing technology using graphic card data processing capability will provide computer users much improved computing power to process large amount of data in addition to the traditional CPU data processing. The proposed research projects aided by the proposed cluster system equipped with the graphic card computing capability will enable ones to develop high performance materials, to understand how biomaterials function, how nonlinear optics can be applied to produce power waves, and how underwater explosion will impact on naval ships etc.. It will significantly improve our understanding on the fundamental science of the problems to be studied and impact on the future research in computation and training of computational scientists.
