High-performance computing center planned for Holyoke

A consortium of high technology companies, state and local governments, and universities including UMass Amherst, has announced that Holyoke has been chosen to host a proposed $100 million, energy-efficient, world-class high-performance computing center. The partners will spend the next 120 days working out funding, location and organizational details.

Organizers say it could anchor a local information technology development district in Holyoke, grow into an important resource for the region’s high-tech industries and research institutions and bring employment opportunities to the Pioneer Valley. Long-term management is expected to rest with the academic research institutions.

Gov. Deval Patrick made the announcement at the Holyoke Public Library on June 11 with President Jack Wilson, the presidents of MIT and Boston University, and vice presidents from industry partners, data storage leader EMC Corp. of Hopkinton and Cisco Systems, Inc. Others collaborating in the Holyoke High-Performance Computing (HPC) Center include the Pioneer Regional Valley Planning Council and the City of Holyoke; more partners from industry and academia are expected to join.

“There was tremendous excitement in the room during the Holyoke HPC announcement yesterday,” said computer scientist Jim Kurose, interim dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, who helped envision the center. “Holyoke is absolutely the right place to locate this project. It has clean, green and cost-effective hydroelectric energy, world-class industry partners, a broad spectrum of outstanding educational institutions, and access to a talented workforce both locally and across the Commonwealth.”

The Holyoke HPC Center will enable the region’s internationally recognized academic institutions to establish statewide collaborative research programs, plus collaborations among local community and technical schools and high schools.

High-performance computing centers use powerful, networked or special-purpose computers and computer clusters to handle massive amounts of data and tackle complex problems, Kurose said. They demand high power and cooling capacity, both of which are available at lower cost from Holyoke’s environmentally friendly hydroelectric facilities. The computer scientist explained that a few years ago the cost of housing and maintaining large numbers of computers drew even with, then significantly exceeded, the cost of the computers themselves, and that gap continues to widen. “If energy and cooling are going to drive the costs,” he noted, “then you look around for who can deliver that.”

Now, using the same water source that powered the local industrial revolution 150 years ago, the HPC project can be a model of energy efficiency for other such centers. Holyoke also offers low real estate costs and access to high-speed fiber optic data lines along I-91 and the Massachusetts Turnpike.

High-performance computer centers have become an increasingly critical tool for both academic and corporate research in application areas such as drug development, life sciences, materials and energy research and climate modeling, for example. There are also many research challenges in the design and operation of the hardware and software of computing systems, Kurose and colleagues point out.

Developing the HPC center in Holyoke is in line with the Commonwealth’s Housing and Economic Development’s Regional Economic Development Framework, organizers point out. Its accessible location in western Massachusetts should also create opportunities for fruitful partnerships with health care centers, e-government initiatives and intelligent building designers and builders.

Kurose said the Holyoke HPC idea evolved from a meeting last fall hosted by MIT President Susan Hockfield that included Gov. Patrick, Wilson and other university leaders, along with leaders from the information technology industry in Massachusetts.

Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

June 12, 2009.

E-mail story to a friendPrinter-friendly version

/more talking points/