MRI: Acquisition of SeaWulf-A Reconfigurable Computer System for Research and Education

The project deploys a high-performance computer system that enhances the research, education and training activities at Stony Brook University (SBU) and partner institutions across the state of New York. Research topics include modeling storm surges and associated damages to inform the design of resilient coastal infrastructure and emergency response; genomics analysis to explore biodiversity and how to conserve ecosystems into the future; analyzing data motion within computer systems to enable more energy efficient designs; development of scalable models of brain function; atomistic simulations of materials proposed for use in fusion reactors; and simulation of supernovae and x-ray bursts fundamental to astronomy. Over sixty graduate and undergraduate courses at SBU regularly use the system, which also creates numerous opportunities for undergraduate research. Through collaborations with the SBU Center for Inclusive Education (CIE) and other organizations, the instrument operates to substantially broaden participation in science and engineering research by women, underrepresented minorities, persons with disabilities, and high-school students. External partners include the SUNY system and the all-women School of Arts & Sciences at the College of New Rochelle. The instrument supports both sophisticated and entry-level users through command-line and web-portal access, and is reconfigurable to move resources between batch and cloud workflows. It includes 165 nodes connected via InfiniBand for a total of 4516 cores with 20.7TB total memory, and is supported by a fast 1PB General Parallel File System (GPFS). The cost-effective, high-performance and high-productivity computing accelerates and expands research, and prepares the research projects and users to exploit the larger national computing facilities. Once operational the system will be used for research and training by forty NSF-sponsored research projects at SBU, and by multiple other projects supported by industry or other agencies, including the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the State of New York.