Stony Brook University has been awarded a $13.77 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a new supercomputer intended to broaden access to artificial intelligence and research computing resources across the country. The project is being led by the university’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), with collaboration from the University at Buffalo.
The funding will support the acquisition and operation of a high-performance, energy-efficient computer that will serve researchers, students, and educators nationwide. The system is designed to meet growing demands in fields such as artificial intelligence and other scientific areas requiring substantial memory and computing power.
The new supercomputer will feature AmpereOne M Advanced Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Machine processors and Qualcomm Cloud AI inference accelerators, technologies that have seen significant use in commercial cloud environments but are being deployed for the first time in academia through this initiative. These components are expected to improve energy efficiency while providing robust performance for a variety of workloads, including large-scale AI models.
“This project employs a comprehensive, multilayered strategy, with regional and national elements to ensure the widest possible benefits,” said IACS director Robert J. Harrison. “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 and computational scientist at the University at Buffalo Center for Computational Research, said: “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.”
Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer at Ampere, stated: “AmpereOne M delivers the performance, memory and energy footprint required for modern research workloads—helping democratize access to AI and data-driven science by lowering the barriers to large-scale compute. We look forward to working with Stony Brook University to integrate this platform into research and education programs, accelerating discoveries in genomics, bioinformatics and AI.”
Dr. Richard Lethin, VP of Engineering at Qualcomm Technologies Inc., added: “Qualcomm Technologies is proud to contribute our expertise in high-performance, energy-efficient AI inference and scalable Qualcomm Cloud AI Inference solutions to this groundbreaking initiative. Our technologies enable seamless integration into a wide range of applications, enabling researchers and students to easily leverage advanced AI capabilities.”
Nationally and regionally, projects supported by this funding will focus on areas not typically served by existing national resources such as life sciences or computational linguistics. The new system aims particularly at high-throughput tasks found in genomics research or statistical analysis; software applications supporting these fields will be optimized for compatibility with Ampere hardware.
Funds provided under this award cover both procurement of equipment and initial year activities; operational support over five years is contingent on external review.