POTSDAM -- The National Science Foundation has awarded $400,000 to Clarkson University to build a new high-performance computing cluster to support data and computer-intensive projects.

This funding is for creation of a new computational cluster, “Accelerating Computational Research for Engineering and Science" (ACRES). It will provide state-of-the-art computational resources to support current research and provide a structure for future growth.

A computing cluster is a group of independent computers most commonly linked together through a high-performance network.

“Building upon the University's strong history of high-impact fundamental and applied research, Clarkson faculty are increasingly pursuing data-intensive, intra- and inter-institutional collaborative activities," says Clarkson Chief Information Officer Joshua Fiske, principal investigator of the NSF award. "Access to high-performance computing resources is critical to expanding these research activities.”

As proposed to the NSF, the project will support 10 active research projects in Clarkson’s four research focus areas: data and complex system analytics, healthy world solutions, advanced materials development, and next-generation healthcare technologies.

"ACRES will facilitate research currently not practical or feasible," says Fiske. "It also will support new student learning opportunities through courses, undergraduate research, and an existing NSF research experience for undergraduates that focuses on high-performance computing."

"ACRES will be available for use by all Clarkson faculty and their research teams to support sponsored research," says Professor and Chair of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering Brian Helenbrook, the award's co-principal investigator. "It will support the University's increased focus on computational research as well as the hiring of additional computationally active faculty."

For users who need more than casual access to a shared computing environment, Clarkson will also offer faculty members the option of purchasing additional dedicated resources to augment ACRES by becoming ACRES owners.

ACRES will start with 2440 Intel Xeon Cascade Lake cores, 8TB of memory, four NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, 40Gbps Infinniband interconnect, and 40TB of SSD scratch storage.