This Major Research Instrumentation grant supports acquisition of a cyberinstrument at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute which combines a next generation massively parallel computer with integrated large-scale high-performance storage and visualization components. The cyberinstrument will provide a well-balanced massively parallel computing platform capable of supporting cutting edge research across a wide range of disciplines that require both data and compute intensive simulations and visualizations.
The cyberinstrument will accelerate ongoing data-intensive computational research, the development of new highly scalable algorithms, and the education of the next generation of high-performance computing researchers and practitioners at Rensselaer. The core of the cyberinstrument will be located at Rensselaer's Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI) which supports over 600 users (researchers and students) from more than 50 universities, national laboratories, industrial research centers and small businesses. The cyberinstrument will allow that user community to more strongly focus on the development of the simulation tools needed for the future high core count massively parallel computers and will accelerate new areas of data intensive computing research. This outstanding balanced system will attract researchers from universities across the United States. Specific emphasis will be placed on attracting researchers from under-served groups.
