PSC Sets the Stage for Bridges-2 Supercomputer

In this video from SC19, Nik Nystrom from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center describes how the Bridges AI supercomputer is tackling new HPC and machine learning workloads.

"Bridges is a uniquely capable resource for empowering new research communities and bringing together HPC, AI and Big Data. PSC’s Bridges supercomputer was the first system to successfully converge HPC, AI, and Big Data. Designed for the U.S. national research community and supported by NSF, Bridges now serves approximately 1800 projects and 7500 users at 380 institutions, and it is the foundation around which new HPC+AI projects have launched. Bridges emphasizes “nontraditional” uses that span the life, physical, and social sciences, computer science, engineering, business, and humanities. Scalable HPC+AI is driving many of those applications, which span diverse topics such as learning root causes of cancer, strategic reasoning, designing new materials, predicting severe storms, recognizing speech including contextual information, and detecting objects in 4k streaming video. To address the demand for scalable AI, PSC recently introduced Bridges-AI, which adds transformative new AI capability. In this presentation, we share our vision in designing HPC+AI systems at PSC and highlight some of the exciting research breakthroughs they are enabling.”

He then goes on to set the stage for the pending Bridges-2 supercomputer.

"Building on PSC's experience with its very successful Bridges system, Bridges-2 will take the next step in pioneering converged, scalable high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI) and data. Designed to power and scale applications identified through close collaboration with the national research community, Bridges-2 will integrate cutting-edge processors, accelerators, large memory, an all-flash storage array and exceptional data-handling capabilities to let researchers meet challenges that otherwise would be out of reach. By enabling AI to be combined with simulation and modeling and through its focus on ease of use and researcher productivity, Bridges-2 will drive a new era of research breakthroughs."