The HPCC was established in 2005 to facilitate discovery by students, faculty, and staff at MSU through the use of high performance computing. The HPCC mission is to provide high quality, high performance computing services to the research community at MSU.
Computation has emerged as the third leg of scientific discovery.
The HPCC began as a faculty-led initiative by several faculty members from the Colleges of Engineering (Profs. Kempel and Jaberi) and Natural Science (Profs. Piecuch, Bao, and Mahanti) interested in high performance computing. A pre-proposal was submitted to the VPRGS as part of the most recent Research Excellence Fund (REF) solicitation. In preparation of a full proposal to the REF program, a workshop was organized at the NSCL to solicit input from faculty across campus regarding their interests and requirements for an HPC center. This information, along with valuable insights from our Big Ten sister institutions, resulted in the plan for the HPCC.
Goals
- Capture research and funding opportunities that would otherwise not be possible
- Leverage HPC resources to increase the research enterprise at MSU
- Provide a forum for cross-disciplinary collaboration
- Maximize the utility of this facility in terms of users supported
- Provide outreach to researchers at MSU currently not utilizing HPC
HPCC is easy to use
During the planning phase, the most prevalent comment from the user community was: “Make it easy to use!!!” The HPCC staff, in cooperation with a faculty advisory panel, constantly strives to meet this need.
The goal of “ease of use” has many implications. The most visible aspect of this mantra is to simplify obtaining accounts on the system, management of jobs, and in providing support to the users. Another meaning is to make the system stable so that researchers can rely on its availability with a consistent user interface.
