CC* Compute: COllaborative Next-generation Technology In the Northeast: the UMassUnity Machine (CONTINUUM)

COllaborative Next-generation Technology In the Northeast: the UMassUnity Machine (CONTINUUM) extends an existing computational resource, UMass Amherst’s UNITY cluster, with eight novel servers that support cutting-edge IBM POWER, GPGPU and FPGA architectures. This extension enables key computational efforts at UMass Amherst and Dartmouth campuses, and the University of Rhode Island in numerous important science areas, including gravitational wave science, metagenomics, earthquake detection, modeling cancer and others.

Based on the science requirements, the existing Unity cluster is extended with eight Power9 nodes, each with dual 2.7 GHz 16-core processors, 256 GB memory, accelerated by dual Nvidia Tesla V100 GPGPUs and a Xilinx Alveo U50 FPGA. Beyond the initial science drivers proposed, the new servers support many more collaborative research teams on the three campuses.

Furthermore, CONTINUUM enables scientific development for the entire Open Science Grid (OSG) community, with access to 20% of the compute time.

The new servers also serve as an important tool for training undergraduate and graduate students in the efficient use of cutting-edge HPC systems. In addition, CONTINUUM supports research and education in an EPSCoR state (RI) and a university campus in Massachusetts with 38% students of color. To promote collaborations with researchers in the wider region, CONTINUUM personnel participate in the regional HPC Day conference and collaborate with the Northeast and CAREERS Cyberteams communities.

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.