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Core of the Month: Research Computing

ASU Research Computing enables research and discovery through the application of advanced computational resources to scientific challenges. ASU's Sol Supercomputer recently received a major performance boost with the installation of over 230 GPU devices, adding to the over 18,000 CPU cores and 4PB of data storage available on the Sol machine.

Drs. Kittiwisit, Bowman, Murray, Gehlot, Jacobs and Beardsley from the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on simulations, run on ASU’s Agave supercomputer, of a new radio telescope, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), currently being built by an international team. Learn more about HERA to discover how this breakthrough will provide insight on galaxies and Dark Matter.

News and Events

Research Computing GPU-focused Expo

To inspire and motivate the use of Research Computing's supercomputing systems and to showcase the important applications of these powerful resources, a one day GPU-focused expo will be held on April 3, 2023 to educate students, staff, and faculty on how to use these graphics processing units (GPUs) on the new Sol supercomputer.

Publications

DNA-Protein Nanostructures! What's not to love?

Researchers from ASU's School of Molecular Science, Eyring Materials Center, and the Center for Molecular Design and Biometrics present the combination of experimental and computational modeling tools for the design and characterization of protein–DNA hybrid nanostructures. They do this by using structural characterization methods like cryo-TEM and AFM.

More about the design and characterization of protein–DNA hybrid nanostructures.

Ikaite on infected tree wound from the Sonoran Desert

Professor Lawrence Garvie of the School of Earth and Space Exploration describes the serendipitous discovery of ikaite on a tree wound in the hot Sonoran Desert, which precipitates during short cold periods in the winter, whereas monohydrocalcite forms through most of the year.

The implications of this discovery.

Core Fun Fact: ASU Sol Supercomputer

The first graphics cards were used in the 1970’s, within arcade machines, as a cheaper alternative to Random-Access Memory (RAM). However, graphics cards were not viable for consumer products until the release of the Large Scale Integration (LSI) circuit chip in the 1980’s. During the early-to-mid 1990’s, graphics cards that were capable of 3D support became more common in arcade, computer and console games. The first consumer-level GPU, meant for personal computers, was the Nvidia GeForce 256, which was released in 1999.

ASU’s Sol supercomputer has over 200 A100 GPUs available for computation. Each A100 can compute nearly 10 trillion 64 bit computations per second. If everyone on earth could type in one computation per second with hand calculators, it would take over 18 minutes what an A100 can accomplish in one second.

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Welcome to the ASU Core Facilities Newsletter. We are ready to support all your research goals. Please follow our LinkedIn page for additional resources and community information.

Core of the Month: Eyring Materials Center

The Eyring Materials Center and Life Science Electron Microscopy facility recently upgraded their resources for electron microscopy.

Thermofisher Talos L120C Transmission Electron Microscope

In August, the Thermofisher Talos L120C transmission electron microscope went online, allowing imaging of thin section (<100 nm) samples in resin or nanoparticles and small molecules at either ambient or cryotemperatures. The Talos can run at voltages between 60 and 120kV and features a low-dose mode to reduce beam damage in delicate samples.

Leica Ice High Pressure Freezer

The new Leica Ice High Pressure Freezer, installed in November, is an efficient, user-friendly system which can high-pressure freeze a wide variety of samples such as adherent cells or cell suspensions, in rapid succession.

News & Events

Core Facilities state-of-the-art equipment

The university's Core Research Facilities offer state-of-the-art equipment available for public use. Click the title above to learn more about the potential and opportunities this research lab can provide for your future!

Fanuc Robocut C400IC Wire EDM

We here at the Instrument Design Fabrication core research facility are very excited to announce that the order for our Fanuc Robocut C4400IC wire EDM has arrived! Special thanks to Hunter Machine Moving for the careful placement of our machine and also to Methods Machine Tools for helping us order the right equipment for our in-house machine shop needs.

Publications

Hydrogel Injection Molding to Generate Complex Encapsulation Geometries

Hydrogel injection molding capitalizes on the reproducibility, efficiency, and scalability of the injection molding process, and we adapt this technique to biofabrication using a library of natural and synthetic hydrogels with varied crosslinking chemistries and kinetics.

Core Fun Facts: Philips EM100

ASU's first electron microscope, the Philips EM100, installed in 1962, had a resolution of 80,000x magnification and 15 A (angstroms). Today our aberration-corrected TEMs can achieve a resolution of 0.7 A.

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ASU Research Computing will be sponsoring a two-day expo to prepare students, staff, and faculty for usage of the ASU supercomputer. The intent of this Expo is to inspire and motivate our research community to use Research Computing's supercomputing systems and to showcase the important applications of these powerful resources. This event will include in-depth & interactive training for vital topics such as using the web portal, the Linux command line, the software module system, job submission, job benchmarking, job profiling, job monitoring, tools for submitting a large number of jobs, as well as how to leverage hardware such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and high memory nodes.

This year, we will feature Keynote Speaker Dr. John Gustafson, an American computer scientist and businessman, chiefly known for his work in High Performance Computing (HPC) such as the invention of Gustafson's Law, introducing the first commercial computer cluster, measuring with QUIPS, leading the reconstruction of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, and several awards for computer speedup.

Date & Time: August 1st to 2nd, 2022, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Memorial Union (Alumni Room)

Register at https://researchacademy.asu.edu/events/2022-08-01/2022-research-computing-expo

Questions? Please contact Research Computing at rtshelp@asu.edu.

Register for the upcoming July Research Computing Workshop, "Simplifying Data Transfers with Globus" scheduled on July 25, from 1:00-2:00 PM. 

The ASU Research Computing supercomputer hosts a high-speed scratch filesystem to quickly compute results in addition to 100 GB of storage in users' own personal home directories. When these filesystems become full, the performance of the supercomputer is impacted which can potentially cause system outages. Using Globus, this workshop will interactively teach users how to transfer data from their scratch or home directories.

In preparation for this training, all attendees are encouraged to obtain an account to access ASU Research Computing's resources if they do not already have one.

Quantum Tech, Coming Soon
March 1, 2022 from 3:00-4:00 PM
Zoom coordinates to be provided upon registration. 

There has been tremendous progress in recent years in quantum tech, which has the potential to impact many industries. Stefan will review the progress in quantum tech and highlight promising real-world applications in areas such as medical imaging and diagnostics, ​​communications, cybersecurity, and positioning and navigation to name a few (hint: not everything is about quantum computing!). 

The potential of quantum tech and its ecosystems can only be realized if there is a push for inclusive workforce education to train a new generation of talent to build and take advantage of these quantum technological tools and resources. In addition, there is a need for partnerships between universities, industry (large and small), and the government to advance quantum technology to the next level.

About Stefan Leichenauer, Ph.D.

Stefan is a researcher with a background in physics who works on real-world applications of AI and quantum technologies. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from UC Berkeley and has held positions in Physics at UC Berkeley and Caltech as a leading researcher. Stefan has also worked at Alphabet as Research Scientist and Engineering Lead. Learn more about Stefan and his scholarly work below:

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All are welcome to attend! Please register here to join us for this event.