Stony Brook University’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), in partnership with the University at Buffalo, has received a $13.77 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a new national supercomputing resource.
The project, called “Sustainable Cyber-infrastructure for Expanding Participation,” aims to make advanced computing and data resources accessible to researchers, students, and educators across the country. The initiative is designed to support research that requires significant memory and computational power, especially in fields such as artificial intelligence.
The funding will be used to acquire and operate a high-performance computer system that emphasizes energy efficiency. The new infrastructure will use AmpereOne M Advanced Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Machine processors, which are noted for their suitability in handling AI inference workloads and tasks typical of academic research computing. The system will also include Qualcomm Cloud AI inference accelerators to further improve energy efficiency and enable the processing of large AI models.
This marks the first time these technologies—previously influential in commercial cloud environments—are being deployed in an academic setting. According to Stony Brook officials, this system will provide competitive performance without requiring users to have deep expertise in programming or hardware features.
Robert J. Harrison, director of IACS, said: “This project employs a comprehensive, multilayered strategy, with regional and national elements to ensure the widest possible benefits. The team will collaborate with multiple initiatives and projects, to reach a broad audience that spans all experience levels from high school students beginning to explore science and technology to faculty members advancing innovation through scholarship and teaching.”
Nikolay Simakov, co-principal investigator from the University at Buffalo Center for Computational Research, added: “The University at Buffalo is excited to partner with Stony Brook on this new project that will advance research, innovation and education by expanding the nation’s cyber-infrastructure to scientific disciplines that were not high performance computing-heavy prior to the AI boom, as well as expanding to non-R1 universities, which also didn’t have much of high-performance computing usage in the past.”
The grant will focus on supporting research areas not typically served by other national computing resources—such as life sciences and computational linguistics—and optimizing software applications for use on Ampere hardware. NSF determined this initiative aligns with its mission after evaluating its intellectual merit and broader impacts.
