Research Infrastructure: CC* Regional Computing: A Regional Computing Hub for Alabama Universities

This award is funded in whole under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Modern research relies heavily on computer modeling of natural phenomena and engineering designs. The proposed regional computing hub would provide the much needed computing power and technical expertise to a consortium of Alabama universities in order to achieve the following objectives. First, adoption of modern computational technologies by educational entities in Alabama, especially targeting minority serving institutions (MSIs).

Second, creation of new knowledge by enabling research across multiple disciplines, including aerospace, agricultural, chemicals, forestry, advanced materials and biosciences. Third, providing a platform for education, workforce training, and sharing of expertise among researchers at participating institutions and the broader jurisdictional community. These objectives directly address the NSF 2022-2026 strategic goals.

High performance computing (HPC) is a cornerstone of modern day scientific and engineering research. For the computing needs, Alabama universities rely on a heterogeneous collection of institutional clusters, resulting in resource under-utilization and low availability for massively parallel computations. The regional computing hub serving the state of Alabama features a flagship HPC system with a Graphic Processor (GPU) component, enabling performance an order of magnitude higher than any individual system in the jurisdiction.

The system was designed to fit the needs of users from multiple diverse STEM fields across Alabama research institutions. The new system contains 3000 CPU cores, 24 GPU enabled nodes and 2 Pbytes of storage, linked together with a 200 Gbit/s Infiniband interconnect. The hub provides technical and educational resources to the members of the consortium to transition their computational projects to the new platform.

Participating institutions in this regional multi-campus computing cluster include: University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH, lead institution), Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (AAMU, MSI), Alabama State University (ASU, MSI), Auburn University (AU), Oakwood University (OU, MSI), Tuskegee University (TU, MSI), University of Alabama (UA), University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), and University of Southern Alabama (USA).

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.