According to recent reports from Boston Xconomy, the state of Massachusetts has recently formed a coalition including university, industry and government individuals tasked with planning and executing the construction of a new high performance computing center in the western part of the state. The report cites several inside sources saying that the new center will fall within the city limits of Holyoke, MA. Individuals close to the deal have also said that there has been a real focus on creating a “green” HPC center from the ground up.
Further updates to the original post cite an article posted in today’s Boston Globe. The article quotes a state official saying that the expected cost of the project will be roughly $100 million, sought from federal stimulus funds. The execution team will be led by MIT and the University of Massaschusetts, with industry participation and guidance from EMC and Cisco.
At this stage, the partners have only agreed to participate in an intensive 120-day planning project that’s intended to work out details such as siting, organization, and funding,” the Globe says. “But the backers say the computer center will create an important resource for the state’s high-tech industry and academic institutions.”
Pay very close attention the industry participants. Notice that there are no major HPC players named in the article. Does this mean that traditional enterprise heavyweights like EMC and Cisco are going after HPC funding? It certainly wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility. Noting the recent release of Cisco’s datacenter server hardware and EMC’s deep pockets in enterprise storage, they could certainly form an HPC force to be reckoned with.
Stay tuned to insideHPC for future coverage. In the mean time, read the original article here.
I think it is fantastic how we are using renewable energy and going green in so many ways. I think we also need to do things like reducing our energy usage, like installing geothermal heat pumps to replace high energy heating and cooling systems.