Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Encyclopedia
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) is a high performance computing and networking center. PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University
and the University of Pittsburgh
together with Westinghouse Electric Company
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
, United States
. It was founded in 1986 by its two Scientific Directors, Dr. Ralph Roskies of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Michael Levine of Carnegie Mellon University.
PSC is a leading partner in the TeraGrid
, the National Science Foundation
’s cyberinfrastructure program.
, PSC works with its TeraGrid partners to harness the full range of information technologies to enable discovery in U.S. science and engineering.
and contributes to the work of the TeraGrid's coordinating Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG) with leadership roles in user support, security, accounting, education, outreach, and training. This NSF
OCI funded program provides U.S. academic researchers with support for and access to leadership-class computing infrastructure and research.
The National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing (NRBSC) pursues leading edge research in high performance computing and the life sciences, and fosters exchange between PSC expertise in computational science and biomedical researchers nationwide. NRBSC is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and grew out of the Biomedical Initiative established at PSC in 1987.
The Productivity from Open INtegrated Tools (POINT) project involves PSC, the University of Oregon, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
. Funded as part of the NSF's Software Development for Cyberinfrastructure (SDCI) program, the goal of the POINT project is to integrate, harden, and deploy an open, portable, robust performance tools environment for NSF-funded high-performance computing centers.
PSC also partners with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to offer free grants of supercomputing time to researchers in Pennsylvania.
PSC is a partner with HPTi
on the Department of Defense's (DoD) User Productivity Enhancement, Technology Transfer and Training (PETTT) contract for the DoD's High Performance Computing Modernization Office. The PETTT Program funnels computational science and related technology to the DoD high performance computing user community.
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
and the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
together with Westinghouse Electric Company
Westinghouse Electric Company
Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is a nuclear power company, offering a wide range of nuclear products and services to utilities throughout the world, including nuclear fuel, service and maintenance, instrumentation and control and advanced nuclear plant designs...
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It was founded in 1986 by its two Scientific Directors, Dr. Ralph Roskies of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Michael Levine of Carnegie Mellon University.
PSC is a leading partner in the TeraGrid
TeraGrid
TeraGrid is an e-Science grid computing infrastructure combining resources at eleven partner sites. The project started in 2001 and operated from 2004 through 2011....
, the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
’s cyberinfrastructure program.
Mission
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center provides university, government, and industrial researchers with access to several of the most powerful systems for high-performance computing, communications and data-handling available nationwide for unclassified research. As a resource provider in the TeraGridTeraGrid
TeraGrid is an e-Science grid computing infrastructure combining resources at eleven partner sites. The project started in 2001 and operated from 2004 through 2011....
, PSC works with its TeraGrid partners to harness the full range of information technologies to enable discovery in U.S. science and engineering.
Partnerships
PSC is a Resource Provider in the TeraGridTeraGrid
TeraGrid is an e-Science grid computing infrastructure combining resources at eleven partner sites. The project started in 2001 and operated from 2004 through 2011....
and contributes to the work of the TeraGrid's coordinating Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG) with leadership roles in user support, security, accounting, education, outreach, and training. This NSF
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
OCI funded program provides U.S. academic researchers with support for and access to leadership-class computing infrastructure and research.
The National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing (NRBSC) pursues leading edge research in high performance computing and the life sciences, and fosters exchange between PSC expertise in computational science and biomedical researchers nationwide. NRBSC is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and grew out of the Biomedical Initiative established at PSC in 1987.
The Productivity from Open INtegrated Tools (POINT) project involves PSC, the University of Oregon, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it provides high-performance...
. Funded as part of the NSF's Software Development for Cyberinfrastructure (SDCI) program, the goal of the POINT project is to integrate, harden, and deploy an open, portable, robust performance tools environment for NSF-funded high-performance computing centers.
PSC also partners with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to offer free grants of supercomputing time to researchers in Pennsylvania.
PSC is a partner with HPTi
HPTi
High Performance Technologies, Inc. is an IT consulting firm based in Reston, Virginia. Founded in 1991, the company is notable for several high-profile solutions for the federal government...
on the Department of Defense's (DoD) User Productivity Enhancement, Technology Transfer and Training (PETTT) contract for the DoD's High Performance Computing Modernization Office. The PETTT Program funnels computational science and related technology to the DoD high performance computing user community.
Sponsors
- National Science FoundationNational Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
- National Institutes of HealthNational Institutes of HealthThe National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
- Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Current supercomputing capabilities
- AntonAnton (computer)Anton is a massively parallel supercomputer designed and built by D. E. Shaw Research in New York. It is a special-purpose system for molecular dynamics simulations of proteins and other biological macromolecules...
: A massively-parallel computer made by D.E. Shaw Research. It has 512-processors and is specialized for molecular dynamicsMolecular dynamicsMolecular dynamics is a computer simulation of physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a period of time, giving a view of the motion of the atoms...
. - Blacklight: A SGI Altix UV1000AltixAltix is a line of servers and supercomputers produced by Silicon Graphics , based on Intel processors. It succeeded the MIPS/IRIX-based Origin 3000 servers....
coherent shared memory machine with 512 eight-core Intel Xeon 7500 processors (4,096 cores) with 32 terabytes of memory. It is partitioned into two connected 16-terabyte coherent shared-memory systems — creating the two largest coherent shared-memory systems in the world. - Pople: A SGI Altix 4700AltixAltix is a line of servers and supercomputers produced by Silicon Graphics , based on Intel processors. It succeeded the MIPS/IRIX-based Origin 3000 servers....
distributed shared memoryDistributed shared memoryDistributed Shared Memory , in Computer Architecture is a form of memory architecture where the memories can be addressed as one address space...
machine with a total of 768 processing cores (192 blades, each with two Intel Itanium dual core processors) and 2 GB RAM per core. Its is part of the NSF's Teragrid. - Salk: A smaller version of Pople with a total of 144 processing cores. It is an NIH sponsored computing resource.
- Warhol: An HP c3000 cluster machine with 64 cores and 128 GB of memory. Warhol is available to academic researchers in Pennsylvania and also to government and private sector researchers anywhere in the U.S.