While algorithms and data play strong roles in the performance of AI systems, equally important is the computing infrastructure upon which the AI systems run. The United States is a world leader in the development of high-performance computing infrastructure that supports AI research. This page provides links to a number of Federally-supported computing infrastructure resources that are useful for AI research.
CLOUDBANK
With support from the National Science Foundation, a partnership of academic institutions and industry have developed and operate CloudBank, a cloud access entity that helps the computer science community access and use public clouds for research and education by delivering a set of managed services designed to simplify access to public clouds.
NIH STRIDES
The NIH Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability (STRIDES) Initiative allows NIH to explore the use of cloud environments to streamline NIH data use by partnering with commercial providers. NIH’s STRIDES Initiative provides cost-effective access to industry-leading partners to help advance biomedical research.
NEOCORTEX
In early summer 2020, an innovative and unprecedented NSF-funded AI supercomputer, Neocortex, was awarded for deployment. Neocortex is designed to capture groundbreaking new hardware technologies and accelerate AI research in pursuit of science, discovery, and societal good. Neocortex will accelerate AI-powered scientific discovery by vastly shortening the time required for deep learning training, foster greater integration of deep learning with scientific workflows, and provide revolutionary new hardware for the development of more efficient algorithms for artificial intelligence and graph analytics.
XSEDE
The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) is a single virtual system that scientists can use to interactively share computing resources, data and expertise. The XSEDE ecosystem encompasses a broad portfolio of resources, including multi-core and many-core high-performance computing (HPC) systems, distributed high-throughput computing (HTC) environments, visualization and data analysis systems, large-memory systems, data storage, and cloud systems.
OPEN SCIENCE GRID
The Open Science Grid/Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing facilitates access to distributed high throughput computing in support of U.S.-based open science. It consists of computing and storage elements at over 100 individual sites spanning the United States, ranging in size from a few hundred to tens of thousands of CPU cores. Resources are contributed and governed through a consortium of research collaborations, campuses, national laboratories and software providers.
COVID-19 HPC CONSORTIUM
The COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium is a unique private-public effort spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Energy and IBM. It brings together federal government, industry, and academic leaders to provide researchers access to powerful high-performance computing resources for COVID-19 research.