New Center For Computational Research Makes UB A Top-10 Academic Supercomputing Site In U.S.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo has established a world-class computational research facility, dramatically transforming the university from a campus without a supercomputer into one of the top-10 academic supercomputing sites in the U.S.

Creation of the Center for Computational Research, which will provide UB faculty members, students and industrial and educational partners with the best technologies available for creating and advancing knowledge, was announced today (Jan. 15, 1999) at a press conference by UB President William R. Greiner.

The center, featuring more than $7 million in computer equipment, has been made possible by a gift of approximately $1.2 million in computer equipment from IBM and a substantial computer-equipment grant from Silicon Graphics, Inc. The center also is being supported by $1 million in funding from the State University of New York, a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and a gift of $300,000 in computer equipment from Sun Microsystems.

The university is making an initial investment of approximately $1.5 million to create and support the center.

The center's 58-processor IBM RS/6000 SP computer, a next-generation version of the Deep Blue computer that beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in May 1997, is one of only a handful of such machines in an academic laboratory in the U.S.

The center also features a 64-processor Silicon Graphics(r) Origin2000 Server(tm) that is one of the most advanced models of its kind in the State of New York and among the most advanced in North American universities. The ccNUMA Origin system with more than 6,000 processors set the record as the World's Fastest Computer on Nov. 7, 1998, running more than 1.6 trillion calculations per second of sustained performance on LINPACK. This earned Silicon Graphics the top spot on the Top 500 Computer List, the equivalent of the Indianapolis 500 race in the computer industry.

Taken together, the supercomputers in the center will be able to carry out more than 60 billion operations per second. They will give the center the capability of performing a calculation in one day that might take two years to complete on a high-end personal computer.

"This center puts UB on the map in terms of high-performance computing," said Russ Miller, Ph.D., UB professor of computer science and engineering and the center's director.

"It takes us from being a major research university completely lacking in high-performance computing to being one of the leading academic institutions in the country in terms of supercomputing power. The facilities available in the center will allow our faculty and research affiliates to pursue significantly more-advanced computationally based science, and allow our industrial partners to step up their R&D efforts."

The center will accelerate significantly the research of UB scientists and engineers conducting research in fields ranging from pharmaceutical drug design and molecular biology to volcanology, atmospheric science and automotive and aerospace design.

It also will offer new research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as sponsor seminars and workshops, and a summer program for high-school students.

Establishment of the Center for Computational Research "will catapult UB into the ranks of the nation's top academic supercomputing sites," Greiner said.

"Our faculty have long wanted a high-performance computational center of this caliber. It will allow them to conduct more-advanced computationally based scientific research, offer new research opportunities to our students and enable our industrial partners to increase their own research-and-development efforts.

"Without a doubt, the center will enhance UB's stature as one of America's premier research universities," Greiner added.

"We are extremely grateful to Silicon Graphics, IBM, the National Science Foundation and Sun Microsystems for their support."

A multidisciplinary field that unites computer technology with many kinds of disciplinary research, computational science already is being called the third science, complementing theoretical and laboratory science.

Advances in computational science are driving the next wave of breakthroughs in such cutting-edge fields as structural biology, computational chemistry, materials science, high-energy physics and global climate change, as well as making feasible sophisticated statistical analyses in the social sciences and the creation and storage of enormous graphics files by digital media artists.

"What UB has done is exactly what a research university preparing itself to enter the 21st century needs to be doing," said Larry Smarr, a member of the White House Advisory Committee for High Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology and the Next Generation Internet and director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The NCSA and the San Diego Supercomputing Center are the National Science Foundation-funded centers designed to provide academic researchers with access to the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

"The new UB center greatly empowers local researchers in that they have smaller versions of these large machines close to them," Smarr said, "giving Buffalo a seamless connection to the emerging national grid that ties together research universities with the nationally funded, high-end computers."

Smarr noted that universities are at a critical stage similar to the one they were at after World War II when major universities were positioning themselves to take a leadership role in the nation's research enterprise.

"Those are the ones that still dominate most of the research funding today," said Smarr. "But the Internet revolution is changing all that and there's a whole new order developing in cyberspace. Universities like UB that understand how to position themselves into this emerging grid could turn over the existing order."

The decision to develop the UB Center for Computational Research was made following a university-wide study of high-performance computing needs undertaken a year ago at the request of then-Provost Thomas E. Headrick.

Establishment of the center is one in a series of recent university initiatives focusing on strategies to provide faculty with tools that will enhance their research, allowing for more, high-profile scientific advances, ultimately increasing UB's ability to attract and retain high-quality faculty and students.

A superior, high-performance computing infrastructure also will enhance UB's opportunities to attract external funding.

private -- that demands access to powerful computing technology," noted UB Provost David J. Triggle.

"We anticipate an increased level of support both for the individual principal investigator, and also in the program-grant area where groups of scientists seek collaborative funding," Triggle added.

"Additionally, the center should be a magnet for cooperative ventures between UB and Western New York institutions, both academic and industrial. The supercomputing facility will serve as one of the key research foci that UB is now developing, and will have a significant impact on the nature and scope of our degree and certificate programs."

Miller said that Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Occidental Chemical, Eastman Kodak, Praxair, Calspan and other major research institutions in the region already have voiced serious interest in utilizing the center's facilities.

"In many scientific fields today, sophisticated visualization is required by scientists in order to effectively evaluate the huge quantities of data produced by the types of high-performance computers that we now have at our disposal," said Miller.

Officials with IBM and Silicon Graphics said their companies were pleased to be able to play an important role in the establishment of the center.

"The incredibly successful ccNUMA architecture of the 64-processor Silicon Graphics(r) Origin 2000(tm) Server is charged with not only protecting the nation's nuclear stockpile, but excels in predictive areas such as modeling of global climate, wildfire, disease epidemics, target drug discovery, transportation and automotive safety," said Chodi McReynolds, director of education marketing at Silicon Graphics. "All these applications require the 'big compute' and 'big graphics' capabilities that SGI offers the university in this partnership."

Lou Bifano, vice president for Solutions and Strategy, IBM RS/6000, noted, "IBM is excited to support innovative and ambitious educational programs like UB's through the IBM Shared University Research Grant program and power of the RS/6000 SP.

"In today's economic climate, skills in high-performance computing aren't a luxury, but a necessity. UB students and faculty now have access to the latest IBM technology to solve real world, 'deep computing' problems, such as drug design, computational chemistry and automotive manufacturing simulations."

Miller emphasized that the center is committed to involving undergraduate and graduate students in its research. Under the direction of Bruce Pitman, Ph.D., UB professor of mathematics, the center is developing master's and doctoral certificate programs in computational science, as well as widening the scope of computational-science education at the undergraduate level.

In addition to offering a program of seminars and workshops, he said the center is planning a summer program for Western New York high-school students, beginning this summer.

He noted, "While K-12 students are becoming proficient at using computers to record data, analyze information and present findings, it is important to educate these students on how to use sophisticated machines and tools to generate new knowledge through modeling and simulation. For example, if one can accurately model a car and its surrounding environment, crash tests can be simulated under a wide variety of conditions."

Miller said there was widespread support for the center within the university. The initial investigation was headed by Sean Sullivan, UB vice provost for academic information and planning, who has continued to support the project and coordinate numerous aspects during its development.

He also cited the support of the center's facilities by the Science and Engineering Node Services (SENS), under the direction of Corky Brunskill. "The strong relationship between CCR and SENS has proven to be a critical link in deploying the machines and is expected to continue even after the center hires support staff during the coming months." Miller added.

He praised Voldemar A. Innus, senior associate vice president for university services, and Robert J. Wagner, senior vice president, for being instrumental in securing funding from SUNY and for their continued support of the center.

Further information about the UB Center for Computational Research is available at its Web site, http://www.ccr.buffalo.edu.