Marist College Beefs Up HPC with IBM z114 Hybrid Mainframe

Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY is expanding its high-performance computing capabilities with a new hybrid computing system from IBM for AIX and Linux applications.

The latest computer installation comes courtesy of a $680,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program to Marist's School of Computer Science and Mathematics. Marist College, which has 5,350 students, has been doing high-performance computing work with IBM since 1988, when the two organizations set up a joint study arrangement. Under the partnership, the school's community works with IBM research and development staff on emerging technology initiatives. That includes IBM involvement in the Marist College Institute for Data Center Professionals, which delivers training on enterprise computing.

The school purchased a mid-sized IBM z114 mainframe with a zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX). zBX houses IBM Power7 blades and System x blades for deploying AIX and Linux applications and optimizers for specific types of workloads.

According to the college, the z114 provides a hybrid computing architecture to more efficiently support workloads that span virtual operating system platforms. For example, if a project requires a statistics library running on AIX and Cognos on Linux on System z, those two virtual machines could be defined as a single workload.

The system resides in the college's Enterprise Computing Research (ECR) Lab. The school will use the mainframe for research and staff training. The new computing resources will also be made available to members of the Enterprise Computing Community, an organization consisting of eight academic and nine corporate members and focused on improving undergraduate education in large systems.

In 2010 IBM had opened a new manufacturing facility in Poughkeepsie at an existing site to produce System z mainframes and other hardware.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • data professionals in a meeting

    Data Fluency as a Strategic Imperative

    As an institution's highest level of data capabilities, data fluency taps into the agency of technical experts who work together with top-level institutional leadership on issues of strategic importance.

  • stacks of glowing digital documents with circuit patterns and data streams

    Mistral AI Introduces AI-Powered OCR

    French AI startup Mistral AI has launched Mistral OCR, an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) API designed to convert printed and scanned documents into digital files with "unprecedented accuracy."

  • geometric pattern of interconnected triangles and hexagons

    Gravyty Merges with AI-Powered Student Engagement Companies Ivy.ai and Ocelot

    Gravyty, a provider of alumni and donor engagement and fundraising solutions, has announced a merger with AI-powered student enrollment and engagement companies Ivy.ai and Ocelot. The combined company will operate under the Gravyty brand.

  • blue AI cloud connected to circuit lines, a server stack, and a shield with a padlock icon

    AI Security Controls Lag Behind Adoption of AI Cloud Services

    Nearly nine out of 10 organizations are already using AI services in the cloud — but fewer than one in seven have implemented AI-specific security controls, according to a recent report from cybersecurity firm Wiz.