The IDSC Advanced Computing Services (ACS) team consults on storage solutions, hardware, installation, systems administration, storage maintenance, account maintenance, and end-user support. They can also provide design and implementation of high-performance solutions, scientific programming, parallel code profiling, and code optimization.
The IDSC ACS team designs and analyzes high-performance computing (HPC) systems for big-data-system users from a variety of application areas, and has expertise in developing distributed computing, software, and databases. The team is also exploring and developing new parallel-computing paradigms and architectures for researchers who need to process, store, retrieve, analyze, and understand massive data sets, where computation and storage breakthroughs are essential.
With all classes of research, IDSC ACS strives for synergy and interaction. Over the past decade, the University’s advanced computing platform has grown the HPC cyberinfrastructure from nothing to a regional advanced-computing environment supporting 500+ users and a large state-of-the-art, high-performance storage system (over 10 PB).
Triton
The U’s latest acquisition, Triton, a state-of-art IBM power9 system was rated one of the Top 5 Academic Institution Supercomputers in the US when purchased, and is UM’s first GPU-accelerated HPC system, representing a completely new approach to computational and data science. Built using IBM Power Systems AC922 servers, this system was designed to maximize data movement between the IBM POWER9 CPU and attached accelerators like GPUs. Triton is designed to accommodate traditional HPC, interactive Data Science, Big Data AI, and Machine Learning workloads. This represents a quantum leap in the University’s computing infrastructure, and it is designed to address the ever-expanding needs of data-driven research.
Pegasus
The University’s first Supercomputer, Pegasus, is an IBM IDataPlex system (ranked at number 389 worldwide on the November 2012 Top 500 Supercomputer Sites list). Pegasus has provided over 90 million CPU hours/year to research projects, and maintains a utilization rate near 85%.
Pegasus now offers researchers from the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center new computational and storage resources. The Pegasus cluster has been augmented with an additional 1024 cores, 6TB of memory and 1PB of high-performance IBM ESS storage. Each additional compute node is equipped with two Intel Xeon scalable 32-core 3.0GHz processors and 256GB DDR4 3200Mhz memory. These additional resources are in response to the growing demand for computational and storage resources at Sylvester and across the University.
AI and Data Science Capabilities
- AI/Machine Learning—Platform/Algorithm Selection and Implementation
- Cybersecurity—End-to-End Solution Design, Implementation, and Support
- Data Engineering—Identifying, integrating, Cleaning, ETL, Processing
- Data Management—Pipeline Services from Ingest to Presentation and Preservation
- Research and Predictive Analytics—Audio Research, IoT, Environmental Monitoring, Security Services
- Scientific Programming—Code Porting, Optimization, Parallelization
- Advanced Systems Services—Self-Serve to Concierge Service, Development to 7×24 Non-Stop Operations, On-Premises and Cloud
For more information, please call or email us at:
305.243.4962 | idsc@miami.edu
Ravi Vadapalli
Director, Advanced Computing
Research Associate Professor, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UM College of Engineering
Dr. Vadapalli joined IDSC after serving as Program Director for the Center for Agile and Adaptive Additive Manufacturing and Senior Director for IT Support at the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton. Prior to UNT, Dr. Vadapalli was a Senior Research Scientist at the High-Performance Computing Center at Texas Tech University (TTU) in Lubbock. In those roles, he helped secure nearly $3 million dollars in external funding, more than $40 million in grant proposals, and more than $230 million in-kind grants for skilled workforce training.
One of Dr. Vadapalli’s priorities is advancing cancer care and research through machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and powerful computer models. At TTU, he partnered with researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University to accelerate the development of patient treatment plans.
Dr. Vadapalli is also interested in applying advanced computing tools to develop sophisticated climate models involving ocean and atmospheric conditions. Dr. Vadapalli holds a Doctorate in Nuclear Physics from Andhra University in India, and a Master’s degree in Computational Engineering from Mississippi State. He and his wife have two sons. Read the IDSC Magazine article welcoming Dr. Vadapalli.
Advanced Computing Team
