IT Services Data Center Infrastructure Nearly in Place for High-Performance Computing

The development of infrastructure to support new supercomputers in the Information Technology Services data center is nearing completion. This new infrastructure will be the latest addition to the high-performance computing facility, an area of the data center dedicated to supporting resources for researchers at the university. This cutting-edge technology will provide access to shared cyber resources and will expand the impact of scientific and medical research. Potential outcomes of such research include the development of non-invasive techniques for detecting breast cancer, new medicines, and smaller, more efficient parts for electronic devices.

To accommodate additional supercomputers in the data center, contractors installed a new transformer on Aug. 2 to provide electricity and cooling. The chiller, a cooling unit, is currently being tested and the uninterrupted power supply batteries that will provide emergency backup power to the supercomputers are expected to be in place shortly. In addition, IT Services has designed a new network to provide faster speeds and greater capacity by allowing only research-specific traffic to travel over the network.

The electrical and cooling infrastructure to support the high performance computing facility was funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the National Science Foundation's Academic Research Infrastructure program. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed by Congress in 2009 to preserve and create jobs, promote economic recovery, provide investments in technological advances in science and health, and stabilize state and local government budgets.

IT Services used a scheduled power services outage as an opportunity to coordinate the installation of infrastructure for the high performance computing facility. The Aug. 2 outage was initially scheduled for the department of facilities management to repair a generator transfer switch that was damaged during an unexpected power failure in February. Combining these projects reduced overall downtime of online services experienced by users on and off campus.