This Major Research Instrument (MRI) project provides for the acquisition of a high-performance computing (HPC) instrument to support research from the University of Houston (UH) system as well as other minority-serving institutions in the Houston region. It enables cross-disciplinary research efforts in: multiscale biomolecular simulations; atomistic molecular dynamics simulations; computational chemistry for alternative energy; simulations of gas-phase, condensed-phase and nanostructured materials; and large-program restructuring for multicore and graphics processing unit (GPU) based systems. This facility also develops simulations of early universe cosmology; simulations of stochastic networks; quantum chromodynamics lattice simulations for particle physics; space radiation analysis and simulations; seismic characterization of wave functions; evolutionary simulations; computational analysis of genomic data; and cloud computing and image processing.
The instrument significantly increases resources available to researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at the participating organizations. On-campus access to a heterogeneous computing platform fosters collaboration between computational scientists and programming experts to advance the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) for scientific computing. Training materials and strategies are developed to support code development and fully exploit the performance benefits. A new generation of open-source, directive-based GPU-enabled application codes are created that demonstrate scalability and portability.
This project greatly enriches the university research infrastructure and increases the use of new HPC techniques and systems at the University of Houston, a Hispanic Serving Institution, and collaborating institutions. UH partners with two Historically Black Colleges (HBCUs) to broaden the participation of students from underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines. The impact is particularly pronounced for undergraduate research. Students and researchers are exposed to a vibrant and multi-disciplinary research environment and receive valuable, advanced training in HPC - skills that are readily transferrable between scientific domains. Aspects of algorithms, computer codes, and data sets developed under this award are made publicly available.
