High-Performance Computing

MIT Adds Supercomputing Center

• By Leila Meyer
• 05/13/16

The MIT Lincoln Laboratory established a new supercomputing center in April to provide more than 1,000 MIT researchers with access to high-performance computing (HPC) cluster nodes.

The Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center (LLSC) features an interactive, on-demand parallel computing system running thousands of processors that will enable MIT researchers "to process larger sets of sensor data, create higher-fidelity simulations, and develop entirely new algorithms," according to information on the lab's site. The center is also "extremely" green, with computers running 93 percent carbon-free, according to information from MIT.

Albert Reuther, manager of LLSC, said the center is unlike other supercomputing centers because of its "focus on interactive supercomputing for high-performance data analysis" and relatively low carbon footprint.

Jeremy Kepner, laboratory fellow and head of the LLSC, said MIT engineers, scientists, faculty and students will use the facility "to conduct research in diverse fields such as space observations, robotic vehicles, communications, cybersecurity, machine learning, sensor processing, electronic devices, bioinformatics and air traffic control."

The LLSC is based in part on the lab's LLGrid infrastructure, which the MIT Lincoln Laboratory established in 2003 and deployed for full lab use in 2006. Originally, the LLGrid was composed of a single 16-processor system, and today it has grown to become a 1,500-processor interactive, parallel computing system.

Further information about the Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center can be found on MIT Lincoln Laboratory's site.