Many NIH funded investigators at Stanford University are increasingly adopting next generation sequencing (NGS) and other high-throughput technologies to accelerate and advance biomedical research in human health and disease. These technologies generate ever increasing amounts of complex and multidimensional data that the use of powerful computational resources and large, fast storage systems are required to properly analyze and interpret the resulting data. The necessary computational infrastructure is typically not found in the majority of research labs and the use of publically accessible systems that are heavily used and over prescribed results in substantial delays in one's research. Therefore we propose to acquire a 50 node computer cluster with 800 cores and 480TB of fast Lustre-based storage to overcome this limitation. The computer cluster will reside in the recently created Stanford Research Computing Facility (SRCF) which is a professionally run high performance computing (HPC) data center managed by the Stanford Research Computing Center (SRCC) and supported by Stanford University. The proposed computer cluster will utilize existing infrastructure within the SRCF significantly reducing startup and operational costs. The acquisition of this system will immediately benefit over 40 NIH research projects at Stanford University.
The requested computer cluster will be used to analyze experimental data generated by high-throughput, state-of-the-art genomics and proteomic technologies at Stanford University in the pursuit of a better understanding of the role that the genome and other molecules play in human health and disease. The computer cluster is necessary to properly equip Stanford researchers with the computational infrastructure necessary to properly analyze the data generated by these technologies in a cost effective and timely manner.
