Artificial Intelligence

Southern Methodist Boosting AI Capacity of HPC

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/12/21

Southern Methodist University (SMU) is upgrading its high-performance computing operations. The Texas institution is investing $11.5 million in hardware, software and training, specifically to boost its HPC infrastructure for artificial intelligence-powered research. SMU has adopted an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, which will go into its data center along with the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform. The NVIDIA technology is being installed at SMU by Houston-based solutions provider Mark III Systems.

The goal is to increase current supercomputer memory 10-fold and achieve AI and machine learning operations 25 times faster than current levels.

The DGX SuperPOD, announced earlier this year by NVIDIA, is a cloud-native, multi-tenant AI supercomputer. It combines multiple DGX systems, which specialize in AI work, and can be shared securely across teams of researchers.

"This partnership will put us in the fast lane for artificial intelligence," predicted SMU President R. Gerald Turner, in a statement. "Research universities like ours have an obligation to actively engage in the development and application of AI for societal good, and this partnership gives us the tools to do it."

"This partnership is a significant boost to our plans for high-performance computing prowess in the academic realm and the expansion of data science across the SMU curriculum," added Elizabeth Loboa, SMU provost and vice president for Academic Affairs. "This will be of great value to our faculty and students who are already using accelerated computing in areas such as drug discovery, computational chemistry, virtualization, astrophysics and engineering."